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EVERY-DAY TOPICS 



EVERY- DAY TOPICS 



BOOK OF BRIEFS 



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, BY 

J. G. HOLLAND 



SECOND SERIES 












NEW YORK 

CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 
743 and 745 Broadway 

1882 







^ 



Copyright by 
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 

1882 



Trow's 

Printing and Bookbinding Company 

201-213 East Twelfth Street 

NEW YORK 



PREFACE. 



BOOKS of sketches, or of brief discussions 
of popular subjects, which can be taken 
up and read separately and completely during 
brief periods of leisure, have always found buyers 
and readers, and I suppose that the volume of 
" Every-Day Topics," made up from the editorials 
in Scribner's Monthly, which was issued a few 
years ago, owed much of its popularity to the 
fact that it was what its title-page called it, " A 
Book of Briefs, " in which the reader could com- 
pass a single article at a short sitting. Its suc- 
cess has emboldened me to cull from the editorials 
of the last five years another volume, prepared 
upon the same plan, which I trust will be equally 
acceptable to the public. 

THE AUTHOR. 

Bonnie Castle, August i, 1881. : 



CONTENTS. 



RELIGION AND THE CHURCH. 

PAGE 

Religion in these Days, i 

A Lay Sermon for Easter, 5 

Checks and Balances, 9 

A New Departure, . . . . . . .13 

Revivals and Evangelists, 16 

The Changes in Preaching, 19 

Culture and Christianity, 23 

Church Music, 26 

Some Thin Virtues, . . ' 3° 

Is Life Worth Living? 34 

The Sermon, 37 

Mr. Huxley's Visit, 41 

Falling from High Places, 45 

The Bondage of the Pulpit, 48 

Sunday Bummers, 52 

"The Machine" in New England, . . . .55 

The Talk about Retribution, . . . . . 59 



viii Contents. 

ART. 

PAGE 

American Art, . 63 

Art Criticism, 67 

Greatness in Art, 70 

Pettiness in Art, 74 

Art as a Steady Diet, 77 

LITERATURE. 

The Legitimate Novel, 81 

Dandyism 84 

The Prices of Books, 88 

The Literary Class, 91 

The Interest of Fiction, 94 

Books and Reading, . . . . . . . .98 

Literary Virility, 101 

Fiction, 105 , 

Goodness as Literary Material, . . . . . 109 

A Word about Newspapers, 113 

Vulgarity in Fiction and on the Stage, . . . 116 

Literary Materials and Tools, 120 

Our Garnered Names, 123 

Is it Poetry? .126 

CERTAIN VIRTUES AND VIRTUOUS HABITS. 

Character, and what Comes of It, . . . 135 

Personal Economies, 138 

American Honesty, 142 

Keeping at It, . . .145 

Suspected Duties, 148 

The Prudential Element, . . . . • .152 



Contents. ix 

EDUCATION AND INDUSTRY. 

PAGE 

The Ornamental Branches, 156 

Fitting for College, . . . . . . . .160 

College Instruction.. 163 

Teachers and Task-Masters, . . . . . 167 

College Trustees and Professors 170 

An Aspect of the Labor Question, .... 174 

Great Shopkeepers 178 

Industrial Education 182 

Industrial Education Again, 186 

TOWN AND COUNTRY. 

Life in Large and Small Towns, 190 

Village Improvement Societies, 193 

Village Reform 196 

Thin Living and Thick Dying 198 

From Country to City, 202 

ABOUT WOMAN. 

Woman and Her Work, 207 

Men and Women 211 

Woman's Winter Amusements 215 

THE CURSE OF PAUPERISM. 

The Pauper Poison, 219 

The Disease of Mendicancy 222 

The Public Charities, 226 

Once More the Tramp, 230 

Pauperizing the Clergy, . .233 

The Dead-Beat Nuisance .237 



x Contents. 

\ TEMPERANCE. 

PAGE 

Temperance Education, 241 

Social Drinking, 245 

The Way we Waste, 247 

DOMESTIC ECONOMY. 

Regulated Production . .252 

The Chinese in California 255 

SOCIAL FACTS, FORCES, AND REFORMS. 

Acting under Excitement, ...... 261 

The Cure for Gossip 265 

The Philosophy of Reform, . . . . .268 

The Reconstruction of National Morality, . . 271 
Double Crimes and One-Sided Laws, .... 274 

The Better Times, 278 

Indications of Progress, ....... 281 

An Epidemic of Dishonesty, 285 

Familiarity, 288 

Social Needs and Social Leading, .... 292 

Marriage as a Test, . 295 

Popular Despotism, 299 

The Social Evil . 303 

The Popular Wisdom, ' 3°7 

A Word on Politics, 3 11 

A Hopeful Lesson, 3*5 

The Shadow of the Negro, ..«.>. 3 20 
The Political Machine, . . . . . . . 324 

Political Training, 3 26 

A Reform in the Civil Service, 330 



Contents. xi 

MATTERS OF DOMESTIC CONCERN. 

PAGE 

Houses and Things, 335 

Good Talking 339 

The Amusements of the Rich, 342 

MISCELLANEOUS. 

Scientific Foolishness, 346 

The Tax for Barbarism, 349 

The Drama, 353 

The Nihilists, 356 

Cheap Opinions, 360 

Too Much of It, . . . 364 

European Travel, 367 



EVERY-DAY TOPICS. 



RELIGION AND THE CHURCH. 

Religion in these Days. 

MAN'S place in nature has never been so sharply and 
profoundly questioned as it has been during the 
past ten years. The answer which science presumes 
to give, when it presumes to give any, is not one which 
pleases or in any way satisfies itself. " Dust thou art, 
and unto dust shalt thou return." Matter and force 
have manifested themselves in man, in form and phe- 
nomena, and the matter and force which have made 
man shall at last all be refunded into the common stock, 
to be used over and over and over again, in other forms 
and phenomena. There is a body, but there is no such 
thing as mind independent of body. The dualism of 
constitution in which we have believed, and which lies 
at the basis of all our religion and philosophy, is a delu- 
sion. Out of all the enormous expenditure of ingenuity, 
or of what appears to be or seems like ingenuity, noth- 
ing is saved. The great field of star-mist out of which 
our solar system was made has been hardened into 
planets, set in motion and filled with life, to go on for 
I 



2 Every-Day Topics. 

untold ages, and then to come to an end — possibly to 
become a field of star-mist again ; and nothing is to be 
saved out of the common fund of matter and force that 
can go on in an independent, immortal life. Man is. 
simply a higher form of animal. God as a personality 
does not exist. Immortality is a dream, and the Chris- 
tian religion, of course, is a delusion. 

These conclusions seem to be the best that science 
can give us. Science believes nothing that it cannot 
prove. There may be a personal God, who takes cog- 
nizance of the personal affairs of men, but science can- 
not prove it ; therefore, a belief in a personal God is 
" unscientific. " There may be such a thing as the hu- 
man soul — a spirit that has a life, or the possibilities of 
a life, independent of the body ; but it cannot be proved. 
Indeed, it seems to be proved that all the phenomena 
of what we call mind are attributable to changes that 
take place among the molecules of the brain. There- 
fore, a belief in the human soul is unscientific. Of 
course, if there is no human soul, there is nothing to 
save ; and if there be nothing to save, Christ was, con- 
sciously or unconsciously, an impostor, and the hopes 
and expectations of all Christendom are vain. And this 
is the highest conclusion to which science seems to be 
able to lead us. Can anything be imagined to be more 
lame and impotent ? We should think that every labora- 
tory and every scientific school, and every library and 
study of a man of science, would seem like a tomb ! 

That this attitude of prominent men of science toward 
the great questions that relate to God, immortality, the 
nature of the human soul and the Christian religion, has 
sadly shaken the faith of a great multitude, there is no 
doubt. Society is honeycombed with infidelity. Men 
stagger in their pulpits with their burden of difficulties 
and doubts. The theological seminaries have become 



Religion and the Church. 



"S 



shaky places, and faith has taken its flight from an un- 
counted number of souls, leaving them in a darkness 
and sadness that no words can describe. All this is 
true. It is so true that tears may well mingle in one's 
ink as he writes it ; but, after all, we have everything 
left that we have ever possessed. Nothing is proved 
against our faith. Science has never proved that there is 
no personal God, no soul, no immortality, no Christ, and 
these are matters that we have always taken on faith. Not 
only this, but there are matters which science is utterly 
incompetent to handle. They are outside of the domain 
of science. Science can no more touch them than it can 
touch anything that it confesses to be " unknowable." 

Now, there are several important things that are to 
be got out of the way before thoughtful Christendom 
can be induced to give up its faith in a personal God. 
First, there is the moral nature of man, which infallibly 
recognizes a personal God. A sensitive moral nature 
and a quickened conscience, whose outcome is a sense 
of moral responsibility, would be lost in the marvel 
of their own existence without the certainty of the per- 
sonal God to whom they owe allegiance. They would 
have no meaning, no authority, no object, without this 
certainty. There is also the religious nature of man. 
Reverence for God, love to God, devotion to God — all 
these, actually or potentially, exist in man's nature. 
They underlie character ; they are potent among mo- 
tives ; and if there be no personal God who exists as 
their legitimate object, what, in the economy of nature, 
do they mean ? There is a question for science to 
answer that is quite worth its while. Why ! a man can- 
not admit the evidence of design in creation without ad- 
mitting the existence of a personal God, and when men 
get so far bankrupt in common sense as to deny the ex- 
istence of design, are they worth minding ? 



4 Every-Day Topics. 

When we admit the existence of a personal God, the 
rest all comes. This doctrine lies at the basis of all 
faith. If there is a great, conscious, spiritual person- 
ality in existence, there are likely to be smaller spirit- 
ual personalities. If there is a personal God who has 
begotten a family of children capable of recognizing and 
loving him, is it probable that he has destined them to 
annihilation ? Is he to get nothing out of this great ex- 
periment — to carry nothing over into a higher life ? 
What are the probabilities ? And why has he planted 
this desire for immortality in all nations and races of 
men — not only the desire, but the expectation ? The 
truth is that every unsophisticated man, looking into 
himself, knows, with the highest degree of moral cer- 
tainty, that he is a living soul, and that the mind acts 
upon the brain as often and as powerfully as the brain 
upon the mind. How often has the brain been para- 
lyzed and the body been killed by a purely mental im- 
pression ! Common sense, that recognizes all the facts 
of being and consciousness, is a great deal better than 
science, that only recognizes what it can prove. 

Admitting the existence of a personal God, and the 
relations of man to him as they are shown in his moral 
and religious nature, a revelation in some form becomes 
probable. Man naturally yearns for this recognition and 
this light, and is supremely happy when he believes he 
possesses it. A great number of people, through a great 
many centuries, have believed in this revelation. They 
have hugged it to their hearts through days of toil and 
sorrow, and rested their heads upon it through nights of 
weariness and pain. The revelation of God in Christ 
has done too much for the world to be put aside at the 
behest of science. If science is right, then Christianity 
is a falsehood ; but did ever falsehood do such work as 
true Christianity has done ? Can a lie transform a base 



Religion and the Church. 5 

and cruel life into one that is pure and brotherly ? Can 
a lie inspire the heroisms and the sacrifices of self which 
have illustrated the path and progress of Christianity 
from the earliest times ? Can a lie sweeten sorrow, 
strengthen weakness, make soft the pillow of death, and 
irradiate the spirit shutting its eyes upon this world with 
a joy too great for utterance ? This is what Christianity 
has done in millions and millions of instances. It is 
busy in its beneficent work of transforming character all 
over the world to-day. Man of science, what have you 
to put in its place ? The doctrine of a world without a 
personal God, and a man without a soul ! God pity the 
man of science who believes in nothing but what he can 
prove by scientific methods ! We cannot imagine a 
sadder or more unfortunate man in the world. God 
pity him, we say, for if ever a human being needed di- 
vine pity, he does. An intelligent man, standing in the 
presence of the Everlasting Father, studying and en- 
deavoring to interpret his works, and refusing to see him 
because he cannot bring him into the field of his tele- 
scope or into the range of a " scientific method," is cer- 
tainly an object to be pitied of angels and of men. The 
marvel is that in his darkness and his sadness men turn 
to him for light — turn to a man for light who denies not 
only God, but the existence of the human soul ! Alas, 
that there should be fools more eminent in their foolish- 
ness than he ! 

A Lay Sermon for Easter. 
In a Christian nation no " topic " could be more ap- 
propriate to the Easter "time" than the resurrection 
from the dead of the founder of Christianity, and there 
is a single aspect of this event which it seems proper for 
us to present. It is particularly appropriate for a secu- 
lar press to do this, because the secular press has had 



6 Every-Day Topics. 

so much to do with the upsetting of the faith of the world 
in this most significant event — an event on which the 
authorities of Christianity make the religion of Christ to 
depend. If Christ be not raised, these authorities de- 
clare that the faith in him is vain and his followers are 
yet in their sins. It is a curious and most noteworthy 
thing, after all the dogmas that have been reared upon 
the death and sacrifice of Christ, that the one only essen- 
tial fact of his history — essential to the establishment of 
his religion, without which everything else would be of 
no account — is declared to be his resurrection. It was 
not enough that he died ; it was not enough that he suf- 
fered — all this was of no account whatever, as compared 
with his rising again. His death did not wipe out the 
sins of his people ; if he did not rise, they were still un- 
forgiven. 

There probably never existed a more fearfully demor- 
alized set of men than the disciples and followers of 
Jesus Christ on the night of his betrayal and arrest. 
One betrayed him, another denied him, and all forsook 
him and fled. They had been with him during his won- 
der-working ; they had heard him talk of his kingdom ; 
some of them had been with him on the Mount of Trans- 
figuration ; they had seen unclean spirits subject to him ; 
they had seen life restored at his touch and disease 
banished by his word ; he had grown before them into 
a great, divine personage, armed with all power and 
clothed with all grace. They had forsaken homes and 
friends and pursuits to follow him, with great, indefinite 
hopes and anticipations that it was he who should re- 
deem Israel, but without any intelligent estimate of his 
mission ; and when they saw him in the hands of his 
enemies, and apparently helpless, a great panic seized 
them, and they literally gave him up, with all the 
schemes engendered by their intercourse with him. 



Religion and the Church. 7 

This, however, was but the beginning of the tragedy. 
Calvary with its cross stood directly before them, and 
the infamy and cruelty of his death were consummated 
there amid such convulsions of nature as might well sig- 
nalize one of the most shameful events in the history of 
human injustice and crime. The great religious teacher 
and inspirer had died the death of a malefactor, hanging 
between two thieves. He had manifested none of the 
power which he claimed, though taunted by the mob and 
called upon to save himself if he indeed were the per- 
son he claimed to be. After he was found to be dead, 
Joseph of Arimathea took down his lifeless body and 
buried it. A stone was rolled to the door of the sepul- 
chre and sealed, and the disciples were in hiding. They 
were undoubtedly in- deep sorrow, for they had loved the 
Master and had built great hopes upon him. But, during 
those three days after his burial, the Christian religion 
was as dead as the person who had undertaken to found 
it. Every hope of his followers were buried in that 
sepulchre, and not one of all their hopes would ever have 
revived had he not come out of it. And this is the 
thought that we wish to present to-day, viz.: that the 
fact that Christianity, as a living and aggressive religion, 
exists at this moment, is proof positive that Christ rose 
from the dead. It never would have started, it never 
could have started, except in the fact of Christ's resur- 
rection. The story of his disappearance from the tomb 
and his reappearance among his disciples is familiar to 
all. These events have formed the themes of painter 
and poet through eighteen hundred years of art and 
song. The story was as incredible to the disciples as 
it is to the scepticism of to-day ; but they saw him, they 
heard him talk, he came and went among them, ap- 
peared and disappeared at will, gave them his message 
and their mission, and was at last received up out of 



8 Every-Day Topics. 

sight, having promised to be with them even unto the 
end of the world. Paul, in writing to the Corinthians, 
says he was seen by Cephas, then by the twelve, after 
that by above five hundred brethren at once, most of 
whom were living at the time he was writing his letter. 
After that he was seen by James, then by all the apos- 
tles again, and at last by Paul himself. It was because 
it was supported by all this throng of witnesses, whose 
word could not be gainsaid, that the Christian religion 
established itself. Not only was Christ indorsed as a 
divine and authoritative personage, but the immortality 
of the soul was demonstrated. What wonder is it that 
these men were ready to die in their devotion to the 
Master, whom they had seen conquering death, and 
whom they had known as an immortal leader ? 

So we say that there is no better evidence that 
Christ rose from the dead than the present existence of 
his church in the world. It never could have been 
founded with Christ in the tomb. It never could have 
been founded on imperfect testimony. These men knew^ 
what they had seen, what their hands had handled, and 
what they were talking about. It really was not a mat- 
ter of faith with them at all ; it was a matter of fact, 
lying indestructibly in their memories, and vitalizing 
all their lives. In the tremendous enthusiasm born of 
this burning memory, Christianity had its birth. In 
the faith of this great initial and essential fact, Chris- 
tianity has been propagated. It is the only open demon- 
stration of the problem of immortality ever vouchsafed 
to the human race, and it is part and parcel of the 
Gospel which Christ commanded should be preached to 
every creature, with lips already clothed with the author- 
ity and with voice already attuned to the harmonies of the 
immortal life. The facts of the resurrection of Christ 
and the immortality of the soul find their highest — nay, 



Religion and the Church. 9 

their overwhelmingly convincing testimony, in the birth 
and continued existence of the Christian religion. There 
is no man living who can form a rational theory of the 
genesis and development of Christianity who does not 
embrace the resurrection as an initial and essential fac- 
tor. A living religion never could have been founded on 
a dead Christ, and it is safe to say that the religion that 
rests upon a living Christ can never be superseded or 
destroyed. 

Checks and Balances. 
In a certain Roman Catholic church near us there is 
now in progress, while we write, a " mission," carried 
on by a body of men called " The Passionist Fathers." 
They are at work at unheard-of hours in the morning, as 
well as during the day and evening, and the attendance 
and attention are something phenomenal. The excite- 
ment is the natural result of a long period of formal 
worship. The church had to be waked up, and that is 
done in a week which ought to have been spread over a 
year — which, if it had been spread over a year, would 
have made the excitement not only unnecessary, but im- 
possible. Such an event shows that very necessary work 
has been neglected. The same thing, calling for the 
same remedies, exists in the Protestant Church. The 
revival is only rendered necessary and possible by a pe- 
riod of spiritual declension and death. When a great 
revival comes to a church, it comes as a natural conse- 
quence of a great falling away of religious interest and 
a long period of spiritual inactivity. When a church 
does every day, and all the time, what it ought to do, a 
revival is impossible. Human nature demands a balance 
in everything, and the revival comes to fill the comple- 
ment of activity necessary to preserve the aggressive life 
of a church. 



10 Every -Day Topics. 

Just now we are having in New York a great temper- 
ance revival. Under the lead of Mr. Murphy, the pledge 
of total abstinence is signed by thousands. There is a 
legal war, too, upon the rum-sellers. All this excited 
and radical action comes just as naturally from a bad 
state of things, political, moral, and social, as the fall of 
rain from an overcharged cloud. If none had sold 
liquor save those who had a legal right to sell, and none 
had become so intemperate in the use of alcoholic drinks 
that the practice had grown to be the great overshadow- 
ing curse of the city, breeding pauperism, misery, and 
crime, Mr. Murphy would have nothing to do, and the 
Society for the Prevention of Crime would never have 
been formed. One extreme breeds another. The 
drunkard calls into existence the rigid adherent of 
" teetotalism.' , The unlicensed rum-seller produces 
the society that puts him on his defence. It is the gross 
abuse of liquor that produces the extremist in temper- 
ance practices and temperance legislation. If there 
were universal temperance there would be no total ab- 
stinence. Extreme temperance men are produced only 
by extreme intemperance in others. It is for the safety 
of society that this law exists, for by it the balance of 
forces is preserved and society restrained from hopeless 
degradation. 

The inauguration of our late civil war illustrated the 
operation of this law in a very notable way. When the 
South became " solid" in its attempt to destroy the 
Union, the North became " solid" in its defence. The 
first gun fired upon the national flag was the signal for 
Northern consolidation. It could not have been other- 
wise, in the nature of things. If a sectional reason had 
arisen for the destruction of the Government, a sectional 
reason would instantly have sprung into being for its pre- 
servation, which would wipe out, or hold in abeyance, 



Religion and the Church. II 

all party affiliations. The solid South produced the solid 
North, and what it did then it will always do. There is 
not the slightest use in quarrelling with the fact, for men 
are not responsible for it. It simply cannot be helped ; 
and if the South ever hopes to be the power in national 
politics that she was in the old days, every man within 
her borders must be free, and the attempt to force her 
constituents into solidity must be abandoned as most 
unwise, and, sectionally, suicidal. It will always be 
enough that the South is solid under political pressure, 
to make it impossible for its friends to assist it in its 
policy, whatever it may be. 

The whole Christian world has become incrusted with 
dogma and formalism. Great importance is attached to 
beliefs and creeds, and the essentials of Christianity, 
including its vital centre, are almost forgotten. The 
church is overloaded with superstition and nonsensical 
beliefs and sacred falsehoods. What is the cure for all 
this? The law of checks and balances has its office 
here, and it has begun its operation through the scepti- 
cism of the scientists. The criticism of science was 
sure to come, as the necessary agent in purifying the 
church of superstition and falsehood. Popery produced 
Luther, and the peculiar form in which Christianity has 
presented itself to this latter age has produced the form 
of infidelity now propagated by the scientists. When 
science shall do its perfect work, and Christianity shall 
be shorn of that which does not belong to it, and of that 
which has brought it into contempt with a world of 
bright men and women, then we shall have such a 
triumph for our religion as the world has never known. 
And here we call the Church to witness that science has 
thus far taught it nothing, in the uprooting an old belief, 
that has not enlarged its ideas of God and humanity. 

Men are very apt to despair of the world, especially 



12 Every -Day Topics. 

those who have labored long for its good. Our excellent 
friends who met last autumn at Dr. Tyng's church, to 
talk about the coming of Christ, were, many of them, 
those who were discouraged with their work, and who 
had come to a realization of the fact that the methods of 
saving men to which they had been bred were inade- 
quate to the undertaking. Did it ever occur to them 
that their methods may be wrong, and that in the devel- 
opment of the future they are to be set right ? Let 
them not be found fighting their Master in the persons 
of those who have been sent to show them the nature of 
the stuff they are believing and preaching. Christianity, 
purified of its dross, will be a very different thing from 
Christianity loaded down with sanctified absurdities. 

The truth is that this law of checks and balances 
makes the world safe. All wrong tendencies and influ- 
ences bring into existence right tendencies and influ- 
ences, and God is always on the side of the latter. If 
an institution is worth saving, and has genuine vitality, 
no influence can be brought against it that will not 
arouse a counteracting power. The attacks of the sci- 
entists upon the Church have aroused such a spirit of 
devotion and inquiry that great good has already resulted 
from them to the church itself, and, as men must have 
religion, those who are outside of the Church are trying to 
get at the essential truth for themselves. Just as soon 
as the Christian world gets over the flurry of the onset, 
and discovers that the office of science and scientific 
criticism is to set it right as to such facts, and such 
only, as come within its range, and that its only lasting 
effect will be to rectify and purify its beliefs, it will 
make a marvellous advance ; and that time we believe to 
be not far off. The cause of Christianity, of humanity, 
of temperance, of progress toward high social ideals, is 
safe in the operation of this beneficent law. There is 



Religion and the Church, 13 

nothing that tells against that which is good in the world 
which has not in it the seeds and the soil of a counter- 
acting and controlling power. 

A New Departure. 

One of the great problems, apparently insoluble, that 
has vexed the pastors and churches of the great cities, 
more particularly during the last ten years, relates to the 
means by which they shall get hold of the great outlying 
world of the poor. So difficult has this question become, 
that pastors and churches alike have been in despair 
over it. The poor have not come into the churches of 
the rich, and few of them, comparatively, have had the 
Gospel preached to. them. The results of mission- 
schools and missions have been unsatisfactory. The 
efforts made have not built up self-supporting institu- 
tions ; those who were benefited have been quite content 
to remain beneficiaries, and the most strenuous efforts 
have been constantly necessary to keep schools and 
congregations together. In the meantime, the work- 
ing churches have been comparatively small, and at- 
tended only by the higher classes. All has gone wrong. 
The high and the humble, who, if anywhere in the world, 
should come together in the churches, have kept them- 
selves separate, and the work of Christianization has 
been carried on slowly, and at a tremendous and most 
discouraging disadvantage. 

One of the leading reasons for the unanimous feeling 
of friendly interest in the late efforts of Messrs. Moody 
and Sankey on the part of the ministers of all denomina- 
tions rested in this difficulty. These men drew the poor 
to them in great numbers, and not only attracted, but 
helped them and held them. To learn how it was done, 
ministers from all quarters assembled in convention, 
and the professional teachers became eager learners at 



14 Every-Day Topics. 

the feet of the two successful laymen. The first result of 
this convention will undoubtedly be a modification of pul- 
pit-work — a modification so marked that it will amount 
to a revolution. The old-fashioned, highly intellectual and 
largely theological sermon will go out, and the simple 
preaching of Jesus Christ as the Saviour of the world, 
and the hortatory appeal, will come in. The ministers, 
however, have all been tending toward this for some 
years. The results of public discussion have been in 
this direction, so that the modification in preaching will 
not be a violent one, save in special instances. Still, the 
change may legitimately be noted as a new departure, 
and one on which the highest hopes may be built. 

But the most important part of the problem is un- 
doubtedly to be solved in another way. For some years 
it has been seen that the great non-church-going public 
has been quite ready to hear preaching, provided they 
could hear it in some other building than the church. 
Wherever the theatre, the opera-house, or the hall lias 
been opened, it has been uniformly filled, and often to 
overflowing. In Boston, Philadelphia, Brooklyn, Chi- 
cago, and New York, the poor have pressed into the 
theatres and public halls whenever there was preach- 
ing to be heard that promised to be worth the hearing. 
We are not going to stop to discuss the reason of this. 
We simply allude to it as a most significant fact in con- 
nection with the policy of the future. The distance be- 
tween the poor, uneducated men, and the rich and cul- 
tured church, is proved to be too great to be spanned by 
a single leap. 

The non-professional teacher and the public hall are 
to furnish the stepping-stones by which the poor are to 
reach the Church. When a man from the poorer walks 
of life — from the ranks of the laborer — stands in a public 
hall where all can come together on common ground, 



Religion and the Church. 15 

and talks to the people in his simple, straightforward 
way, upon subjects connected with their highest inter- 
ests, he furnishes all the means, and is surrounded by all 
the conditions, necessary to success in his endeavors. 
He can do what no professional man can do in any build- 
ing devoted to religious purposes. We make this state- 
ment, not as a matter of theory, but as a matter of well- 
established fact. The preachers know it ; the people 
know it. It is a thing that has been marvellously demon- 
strated, and if the Christian world is not ready to accept 
this demonstration, with all its practical indications, it 
will show itself to be criminally blind. 

Any new departure in the methods of Christian work 
will, therefore, be very incomplete — nugatory, in fact — 
which does not recognize lay preaching in public halls as 
an important part of its policy. We have seen just how 
the poor are to be reached and lifted into the churches, 
because we have seen just how they have been reached 
and lifted into the churches. During the efforts of Mr. 
Moody in London, Brooklyn, Philadelphia, and New 
York, thousands whom no pulpit could ever influence 
have found their way through his audience-rooms into 
the Church. He has officiated as a mediator between 
the world and the church, and has been a thousand times 
wiser than he knew, or the Church suspected. He has 
solved the one grand problem that has puzzled the 
Church and its ministry for years, and they will be 
short-sighted and stingy, indeed, if they fail to make his 
work the basis of a permanent policy. 

In every considerable city of the United States all 
Christian sects should unite in the establishment of halls 
for the work of evangelists — of men who have a special 
gift for preaching the simple Gospel. The example of 
such a man as Mr. Moody cannot but be fruitful in call- 
ing out from the ranks of Christian laymen a little army 



16 Every -Day Topics. 

of talented and devoted workers, who will enter into his 
methods and swell the results of his work. All evangel- 
ists whose work is worth the having should labor in this 
field. No man should be in it who cares more for build- 
ing up one church than another, for one of the prime 
conditions of his success is, that he shall not be regarded 
as the mouthpiece of any Christian sect or party. The 
essential thing is, that he shall be a Christian, moved 
by the love of God and man, and desirous only of bring- 
ing men to God. If the Church does not see a new light 
upon its path, poured upon it by the events to which we 
have alluded, it must be blind indeed. But it does see 
the new light, and we believe that its leaders and teach- 
ers are ready to walk in it. 

Revivals and Evangelists. 

Revivals seem to have become a part of the estab- 
lished policy of nearly the whole Christian Church. The 
Catholics have their " Missions/' the Episcopalians have 
their regular special seasons of religious devotion and 
effort, while the other forms of Prostestantism look to 
revivals, occasionally appearing, as the times of general 
awakening and general in-gathering. Regular church 
life, family culture, Sunday-schools and even regular 
Mission work seem quite insufficient for aggressive pur- 
poses upon the world. We do not propose to question 
this policy, though the time will doubtless come, in the 
progress of Christianity, when it will be forgotten. We 
have only to say a word in regard to the association of 
evangelists with revivals, and the two principal modes 
of their operation. With one we have very little sympa- 
thy, with the other a great deal. 

There is a class of evangelists who go from church to 
church, of whom most clergymen are afraid ; and their 
fears are thoroughly well grounded. There arises, we 



Religion and the Church. if 

will say, a strong religious interest in a church. Every- 
thing seems favorable to what is called "a revival." 
Some well-meaning member thinks that if Mr. Bedlow 
could only come and help the fatigued pastor, wonder- 
ful results would follow. The pastor does not wish to 
stand in the way — is suspicious that he has unworthy 
prejudices against Mr. Bedlow — tries to overcome them, 
and Mr. Bedlow appears. But Mr. Bedlow utterly ig- 
nores the condition of the church, and, instead of sensi- 
tively apprehending it and adapting himself to the line 
of influences already in progress, arrests everything by 
an attempt to start anew, and carry on operations by his 
own patent method. The first movement is to get the 
pastor and the pastor's wife and all the prominent mem- 
bers upon their knees, in a confession that they have 
been all wrong — miserably unfaithful to their duties and 
their trust. This is the first step, and of course, it es- 
tablishes Mr. Bedlow in the supreme position, which is 
precisely what he deems essential. The methods and 
controlling influences of the church are uprooted, and, 
for the time, Mr. Bedlow has everything his own way. 
Some are disgusted, some are disheartened, a great 
many are excited, and the good results, whatever they 
may seem to be, are ephemeral. There inevitably fol- 
lows a reaction, and in a year the church acknowledges 
to itself that it is left in a worse condition than that in 
which Mr. Bedlow found it. The minister has been 
shaken from his poise, the church is dead, and whatever 
happens, Mr. Bedlow, still going through his process 
elsewhere, will not be invited there again. 

We will deny nothing to the motives of these itiner- 
ants. They seem to thrive personally and financially. 
They undoubtedly do good under peculiar circum- 
stances, but, that they are dangerous men we do not 
question. If neighboring clergymen, in a brotherly 



1 8 Every -Day Topics. 

way, were to come to the help of one seriously over- 
worked, and enter into his spirit and his method of 
labor, it would be a great deal better than to bring in a 
foreign power that will work by its own methods or not 
work at all, — that will rule or do nothing. If this maga- 
zine, or the writer of this article, has seemed to be 
against revivals, it and he have only been against re- 
vivals of this sort, got up and carried on by these men. 
We question very sincerely whether they have not done 
more harm to the Church than they have done good. 
That they have injured many churches very seriously 
there can be no question. The mere idea that the com- 
ing of Mr. Bedlow into a church will bring a revival 
which would be denied to a conscientious, devoted pas- 
tor and people, is enough, of itself, to shake the popu- 
lar faith in Christianity and its divine and gracious 
founder. Even if it fails to do this, it may well shake 
the popular faith in the character of the revival and its 
results. 

There is another class of evangelists who work in a 
very different way. It is very small at present, but it is 
destined to grow larger. It works, not inside of churches, 
but outside of them. It has a mission, not to the 
churches, but to the people who are outside of them. 
It works in public halls with no sectarian ideas to push, 
no party to build up, no special church to benefit. It 
aims at a popular awakening, and, when it gains a man, 
it sends him to the church of his choice, to be educated 
in Christian living. To this class belong Messrs. Moody 
and Sankey, whose efforts we have approved from the 
first, because they have done their work in this way. 
That it is a better work than the other class of evangel- 
ists have ever done, we have the evidence on every hand. 
The churches are all quickened by it to go on with their 
own work in their own way. There is no usurpation of 



Religion and the Church. 19 

pastoral authority and influence. There is no interfer- 
ence with methods that have had a natural growth and 
development out of the individualities of the member- 
ship, and out of the individual circumstances of each 
church. 

There is another good result which grows naturally 
out of the labors of this class of men. It brings all the 
churches together upon common ground. The Presby- 
terian, the Baptist, the Methodist, the Episcopalian, sit on 
the same platform, and, together, learn that, after all, the 
beginning and the essence of a Christian life and char- 
acter are the same in every church. They learn toleration 
for one another. More than this : they learn friendliness 
and love for one another. They light their torches at a 
common fire, and kindle the flame upon their own separ- 
ate altars in a common sympathy. They all feel that 
the evangelist has to do mainly with the beginnings of 
Christian life, and that it is their work to gather in and 
perfect those results which have only been initiated. 
Hence, all have an interest in that work and help it on 
with united heart and voice. The more of this kind of 
evangelism we have, the better. 

The Changes in Preaching. 
That an important change is now in progress in the 
American pulpit, is evident to even a careless observer. 
The preachers now coming upon the stage are studying 
methods and arts as they have never done within our 
memory. A most important fact began, fifteen or 
twenty years ago, to manifest itself alike to teachers and 
disciples, viz., the fact that the great masses were slip- 
ping more and more out of the reach of the church, and 
that the preacher was losing his power, even over his 
own flock. It was hard for men trained in the old ways 
to understand the causes of this misfortune ; but it be- 



20 Every-Day Topics. 

came apparent at last to one, here and there, that a 
theological skeleton, unclothed with flesh and blood, 
and without a warm heart behind its ribs, was not an 
inspiring object. It became apparent that the world 
was sick of theology, and, if it could not have the gos- 
pel, would not have anything. There are still many 
among the preachers who suppose that theology is the 
gospel, but they are rapidly passing away. 

A very successful preacher, in a recent conversation, 
said that his theology was a sort of dry codfish which he 
hung up in his study by the tail, and whenever he 
wanted any of it he cut out a chunk. Another, of al- 
most equal eminence, said, that while it seemed to him 
very important that a preacher should be well grounded 
in Christian doctrine, and have definite and well-settled 
opinions on theology, he should never think of taking 
theology into the pulpit ! Both these men are earnest 
men, and remarkable preachers, but they have made the 
clean jump into the new order of things. Can New 
England ever comprehend this — that a preacher can be 
in dead earnest, and yet, without any reservation, say 
that theology is a thing for the study and not for the pul- 
pit? Of course it is nothing less than a revolution, but 
toward this is the drift of the day. 

It is a significant commentary on the condition of the 
Christian mind of the country that this revolution needs 
explaining. There are great multitudes who have so 
identified theology with religion that they cannot con- 
ceive what a preacher who says nothing of theology can 
have to say, and what can be the object of his preaching 
at all. Indeed, we have heard a prominent preacher of 
the old sort confidently declare that no preacher can sus- 
tain himself, or find enough to talk about, who does not 
preach theology. He was honest in his declaration, and 
he will never be revolutionized, and never be very use- 



Religion and the Church. 21 

ful ; but his successor will understand it, and his peo- 
ple will win the profit of his intelligence. To explain, 
then, what is involved in this revolution : the man who 
preaches theology exclusively, preaches exclusively to 
the head ; and every man preaches to the head in just 
the measure that he preaches theology. The man who 
preaches the gospel preaches a person, — preaches a life 
and death and resurrection, — proclaims the good tidings 
of a divine message and a divine mission to men, — ad- 
dresses and works upon the higher sentiments, — labors 
for the uprooting of selfishness in the heart and life, and 
the implanting in them of love as the dominant motive, 
and labors for a transformation of character. The great 
aim of the man who preaches the gospel is to make bad 
men good, and good men better, — to improve the quality 
of character and life, — to bring man into that harmony 
with God and the divine moralities which will be secured 
through the following of the Master. The old sort of 
preaching is not unlike the work of articulating a skele- 
ton ; the new sort is not unlike that of gathering and 
weaving a garland of flowers. There maybe a certain 
amount of mental discipline in theology, but, on the 
whole, mathematics must be preferable ; and, really, if 
a man feels that he must go for the heads of his congre- 
gation every time, let him drop his pen, and with a piece 
of chalk and a blackboard, talk about something that he 
understands, and something that will be of practical 
value to his people. 

Revivals have become necessary to the advance of 
Christianity, simply because of the incompetency of the 
ordinary preaching ; and the moment the revivals come, 
the preaching changes, or it changes before they come. 
In the nature of things, there ought not to be much for a 
revival to do in any church which has had the simple 
good news preached to it, and in which the heart and 



2 2 Every- Day Topics. 

life and better motives have been affectionately and per- 
sistently addressed. Revivals are nothing but a make- 
shift. It is not a very high idea of the Father of us all 
that supposes him any more willing to convert men at 
one time than another. Preachers full of the learning 
of the schools go on from year to year with their dry dis- 
courses, and wonder that nothing comes of them. Then 
a Christian ignoramus comes along, with burning love 
and zeal in his heart, and no theology to speak of in 
his head, and bad grammar on his tongue, and the long 
winter breaks up, and the waters flow once more, and 
the meadows blossom again. And this is done over and 
over, with some good results and many bad ones. 

With the passing away of the theological essay, will 
pass away much of the necessity of written discourses ; 
and it will be noticed that very nearly in the proportion 
in which the character of preaching has changed, has 
the oral supplanted the written discourse. We think it 
is seen now, with great distinctness, that, in addressing 
motives, direct speech from heart to heart is almost in- 
finitely superior to the reading of pages conceived and 
framed in the study. If instruction were needed upon 
this point, the history of Methodism in this country 
would furnish it in abundance. With a ministry con- 
fessedly inferior in scholarship, at least in its begin- 
nings, but with direct address from every pulpit to the 
heart and life, the success of this denomination has been 
enormous. With high culture on the part of its teachers 
its progress would possibly have been wider, but they 
have at least proved that the direct, spoken discourse is a 
power which every pulpit should assume and use as soon 
as it can. The question whether a young man who cannot 
acquire the ability to speak well without reading has a call 
to preach is, to say the least, an open one. At any rate, 
this ability is what all divinity students are striving for. 



Religion and the Church. 23 



Culture and Christianity. 

It hardly needs to be said that the tendency of modern 
culture is away from Christianity. It diverges from it 
not only in its faith, or lack of faith, but in its spirit and 
in its effect upon character. With a multitude of minds, 
more or less intelligent, culture stands in the place of 
any sort of cult. To these, the perfection of the human 
being, through the development of its native powers and 
the harmonization of those powers by discipline and 
happy use and control, seems a dream quite possible to 
be realized. Turning their backs to faith, they give one 
hand to science and the other to art, to be led upward 
and onward in " the path of progress." They hold 
meetings ; they " preach ; " they address the " Infinite 
Mystery" in " aspiration ; " they go through various 
imitative motions which show that Christian ideas haunt 
them, while they pretend to ignore every fact out of 
which those ideas have grown. It is always well, when 
one gets a little muddled over a new system of ideas, 
and particularly over the talk about it, to take one of 
them, follow it out, and see where it lands a man. 

One large portion of the domain of culture ultimates 
in art. It is in art that it comes to its flower, and it is 
in the reactions of art upon the artist, and in the motives 
engendered and nourished by art, that we learn just what 
this kind of culture does for a man. A tree is known by 
its fruits. Much of the talk of culture is very foggy. 
Many of its assertions and propositions are as hard to 
disprove as to prove. It is full of glittering generalities ; 
it utters ingenious sophisms ; it puts on superior airs ; 
and many a simple-hearted believer who knows that he 
holds in his faith something that is infinitely fruitful and 
valuable stands before it with a silent tongue. But when 
it begins to act, it begins to show the stuff that it is made 



24 Every-Day Topics. 

of. It talks divinely of progress, but when it starts to 
walk it goes lame. 

If we may judge by facts that are painfully patent, 
there is no occupation in the world that so belittles and 
degrades men and women as that which is based upon, 
or which engages, the different fine arts. In literature, 
in sculpture and picture, in the theatre, in music, in 
every branch of art that enlists the higher and finer 
powers of men and women, we have the most lament- 
able evidence that culture has not one purifying, or en- 
nobling quality when unaccompanied by religion. In 
literature, men and women are broken up into cliques 
and parties, and the criticism of the time is honeycombed 
with jealousies and spites. Selfishness dominates here 
as in other domains of art. It is charged with the spirit 
of detraction. This is no new state of things. One has 
but to turn over the pages of the old reviews, or listen 
to the echoes of Byron's angry protest, to learn that the 
present time is a legitimate successor of the past, ancj 
that brutality of the grossest type may characterize the 
followers of the sublimest art the world knows. The 
highest powers, cultivated to their highest point, speak- 
ing in the sweetest voice of literary art, save no man 
from being a sot, a debauchee, an adulterer, a disgusting 
boaster, a selfish glutton of praise, and a vindictive 
enemy of all who dispute with him the high places of 
the public admiration. 

If all this can be said of literary art, and of those who 
are engaged in it, what shall we say of artists of other 
professions and names ? Why is it that so bad a flavor 
lingers around the opera-house and the theatre ? Why 
is it that the church protests against them ? It is not 
that these institutions are necessarily bad. It is not 
that there are no good men and women among actors 
and actresses. It is because that from the dawn of the 



Religion and the Church, 25 

drama until the present time, the stage has been asso- 
ciated with unworthy lives, impure connections, the 
most degrading jealousies, the bitterest rivalries, and the 
most disgusting selfishness. Nobody knows this any 
better, or feels it more keenly when they stop to think at 
all, than the actors and musicians themselves. It is all 
shamefully and notoriously true. Does not music purify 
those who devote their lives to it ? Not at all. Not in 
the slightest degree. There is no more reformatory or 
saving power in music than in the lowest of menial pur- 
suits. The farmer, who lives half the time among his 
brutes, is likely to be a better man than he who, suc- 
cessfully interpreting some great master, bows nightly 
before the storms of popular applause. 

Bear us witness, ye poets and actors, ye painters and 
sculptors, ye singers and players upon instruments, that 
your arts have not saved the most of you from becoming 
petty and selfish men and women. You are jealous of 
one another. You are greedy of praise and of the gold 
it brings. You know that there is nothing in your heart 
that enlarges and liberalizes you, that restrains you from 
drunkenness and vices that shall not be named, that 
gives you sobriety and solidity of character, that en- 
larges your social sympathies, that naturally leads you 
into organizations for helping others outside of your own 
circle. Bear us witness, that you are not the men and 
women who are relied on for performing the duties of so- 
ciety. If all were like you, — if all were controlled by the 
ideas that dominate you, — if all shirked the duties 
of social and civil life like you, — if all were as much un- 
fitted by their ideas and their employments as you are 
for carrying the great burdens of society, what do you 
suppose would become of the country, and what would 
become of the world ? 

Now, if there is anything in art that can take the place 
2 



26 Every-Day Topics. 

of religion, we should like to see it. If there is anything 
in culture that can take the place of religion, it has not 
yet revealed itself. Culture is centred in self. Self is 
the god and self is the model of all culture. Why should 
it not ultimate in selfishness ? Culture assumes that 
what is present in a man needs only to be developed and 
harmonized to lift character to its highest point, and life 
to its highest issues. It carries no idea of self-surrender, 
which is the first fact in practical religion of any valuable 
sort, and the first fact in all good development. Greece 
and Rome had plenty of culture, and are still our 
teachers in art, but the beauty that looked upon them 
from every hill and gate and temple could not save them 
from their vices. By and by, culture will learn how 
powerless it is to make a man that shall be worth the 
making, and what poor instruments science and art are 
for uprooting the selfishness that rules the world. It is 
slowly learning this, and men who have bowed low to 
her have been touched with that divine discontent which 
nothing but religion can allay. 

Church Music. 
There are great varieties and contrarieties of opin- 
ion on church music, as well among pastors as congre- 
gations. It begins with the hymns. There are those 
who believe that theology should be taught by hymns, 
that appeals to heart and conscience should be made in 
hymns, that all phases of religious experience and feel- 
ing may legitimately be addressed through hymns. 
There are others who reject this theory, and would con- 
fine hymns to the expression of penitence or praise to 
God. They feel that a hymn, publicly sung, should be 
an address of the human heart to the great father heart, 
and not an address of man to man, and that chiefly this 
expression should be confined to praise and thanksgiv- 



Religion and the Church. 27 

ing. When Mr. Sankey was here, he was inquired of 
concerning this point, and his answer, very definitely 
given, was that he regarded singing as possessing two 
different offices in the public services of the church — 
one of address to God, and another to man. Mr. Sankey 
would not stand very high as an authority on such a 
matter, but his idea is practically adopted in every hymn- 
book with which we are acquainted. 

Now, to us, there is something almost ridiculous in 
the hymns which undertake the offices of teaching, preach- 
ing, and exhortation. Think of a congregation wailing 
out, to the old tune " China," the words: 

*' Why do ye mourn departing friends 
Or shake at death's alarms ? " 

Or to some other tune : 

" Think gently of the erring one, 
And let us not forget 
However darkly stained by sin, 
He is our brother yet." 

Or this, to old " Amsterdam : " 

11 Time is winging us away 
To our eternal home ; 
Life is but a winter's day — 
A journey to the tomb. " 

Or this: 

11 Behold the day is come, 

The righteous Judge is near ; 
And sinners trembling at their doom, 
Shall soon their sentence hear." 

Or this exhortation : 

" Why will ye waste on trifling cares 
That life which God's compassion spares ? " 



28 Every-Day Topics. 

Or this statement and inquiry: 

ll What various hindrances we meet 
In coming to a mercy-seat ! 
Yet who that knows the worth of prayer 
But wishes to be often there ? v 

We take all the above extracts from the very best 
hymn-book with which we are acquainted, and we sub- 
mit that to stand up and sing them is an absurd perform- 
ance, especially when it takes place in public. Some of 
them are utterly unsingable when regarded with relation 
to any natural impulse, or any gracious impulse, for that 
matter. We laugh at the absurdities of the opera, — at a 
man who straddles around the stage, yelling his love or 
his defiance to a tune, and our laugh is perfectly justifia- 
ble. But for the reverence with which we regard every- 
thing that has been even remotely associated with the 
house and worship of God, we should say that the sing- 
ing of such songs as these would be equally laughable. 
Still, Mr. Sankey and those who agree with him will keep 
on singing these songs, we suppose. It gives us great 
pleasure, however, to notice that they are growing fewer 
and fewer from year to year and from generation to gen- 
eration, in new collections, and that the hymns that are 
sung are addressed more and more to God, while to the 
voice in the pulpit are left the various offices to which 
song has hitherto been, as we think, illegitimately sub- 
jected. 

Leaving the hymns, we come to the question of music. 
What office has music in the public services of the 
church ? Let us say right here that we have not ob- 
jected to the hymns belonging to the class from which we 
have quoted, because we do not think that man's sensi- 
bilities should not be appealed to through music. We 
have objected to them mainly because they are unnatu- 
rally wedded to music. We do not naturally sing about 



Religion and the Church. 29 

the judgment day, or about death, or about our erring 
brother, or about the rapid passage of time. The wed- 
ding of things like these to music is an absurdity. So 
we recur to the question — " What office has music in 
the public services of the church ? " It has two. The 
first and foremost is to give a natural expression of the 
feelings of the soul toward the object of its worship. 
The second is to elevate the spirit and bring it into the 
mood of worship and the contemplation of high and holy 
things. It has an office quite independent of any words 
with which it maybe associated. Music itself is a lan- 
guage which many religious hearts understand, and by 
which they are led into and through a multitude of re- 
ligious thoughts and emotional exercises. The voluntary 
upon the organ, played by a reverent man, is perfectly 
legitimate sacred music, to be executed and listened 
to at leisure. 

Nobody, we presume, will question what we say about 
this, yet in practice there is the widest difference among 
pastors and churches. One pastor or church demands 
the highest grade of music to be performed by a thorough- 
ly drilled quartette or choir ; another subordinates the 
choir, or discards it altogether, and will have nothing but 
congregational singing. The former make very much of 
the musical element, and do a great deal to act upon the 
sensibilities of the worshippers through it. The latter 
make little or nothing of the musical element, and think 
that nothing is genuine public praise but that which is 
engaged in by a whole congregation. Now, it is quite 
easy to overdo the music of a church. That has been 
done in this city, in many notable instances, but we very 
much prefer a mistake in that direction to one in the 
other. There are some ministers who forget that a choir 
may just as legitimately lead the praise of a congrega- 
tion, as any one of them may lead its prayer, and that a 



30 Every-Day Topics. 

choir has a sacred office and function in the church quite 
independent of themselves. If a preacher may be fol- 
lowed in his petition by his congregation, certainly a 
choir may be followed in its expression of thanksgiving. 

For ourselves, we are very much afraid of the move- 
ment toward congregational music. The tendency thus 
far has been to depreciate not only the quality of music, 
in the churches, but the importance of it, and to make 
public worship very much less attractive to the great 
world which it is the church's duty and policy to attract 
and to influence. The churches are full, as a rule, where 
the music is excellent. This fact may not be very flat- 
tering to preachers, but it is a fact, and it is quite a legiti- 
mate question whether a church has a right to surrender 
any attraction that will give it a hold upon the attention 
of the world, especially if that attraction is an elevating 
one, and in the direct line of Christian influence. Con- 
gregational singing is well enough in its place and pro- 
portions, but very little of the inspiration of music comes 
through it. It is, indeed, more of a torture than a pleas- 
ure to many musical and devout people. The ideal 
arrangement, as it seems to us, is a first class quartette, 
made up of soloists, who take a prominent part in the 
public service, with a single choral in each service given 
to the congregation to sing. In this way, the two offices 
of music in public religious assemblies seem to be se- 
cured more surely and satisfactorily than in any other. 

Some Thin Virtues. 
As a working rule, in the conduct of life, we suppose 
there is no better than that which has been denominated 
" The Golden Rule," but its author could hardly have 
regarded it as the highest and best. There seems to be 
no motive bound up in it but a selfish one, and no stand- 
ard of morality but the actor's own desires. The Golden 



Religion and the Church. 31 

Rule, as we call it, seems to be hardly more than com- 
mon decency formulated. Nothing, obviously, can be 
decent in our treatment of others that we do not recog- 
nize as proper and desirable in their treatment of our- 
selves. It is a rule that seems to be made for supreme 
selfishness. Refrain from putting your foot into another 
pig's trough, unless you are willing to have another pig 
put his foot into your trough. One of the great mistakes 
of the world, and especially of the Christian world, is in 
the conviction that this is a high rule of action, and that 
the virtue based upon it is of superior value. It is the 
thinnest kind of a virtue, and if there be not the love of 
God and man behind it, to give it vitality and meaning, 
it can never minister much to good character. What a 
man does, actuated by the motive of love, he does nobly, 
and the same thing may not be done nobly at all when 
done in accordance with the rule to do to others what one 
would like to have others do to himself. 

There are other virtues that are very much over-esti- 
mated, eminent among which is that of toleration. We 
know of none so thin as this, yet this is one over which 
an enormous amount of bragging is done. We talk 
about the religious toleration practised by our govern- 
ment, as if it were something quite unnatural for a gov- 
ernment to protect its own people in the exercise of their 
most precious opinions and privileges. The man who 
personally tolerates all men, and all societies of men, in 
the exercise of their opinions upon religion and politics, 
is not without his boast of it, and a feeling that he .has 
outgrown most of the people around him. The sad thing 
about it all is, of course, that a country or a community 
can be so blind and stupid that toleration can appear to 
be a virtue at all, or so bigoted and wilful that it can 
even appear to be a vice. 

We thank no man for tolerating our opinions on any- 



32 Every-Day Topics. 

thing, nor do we give him any praise for it, any more 
than we thank him for the liberty of breathing with him 
a common air. Toleration is the name that we give to 
the common decencies of intellectual and moral life. It 
is the Golden Rule applied to the things of opinion and 
expression. It is by no means a high affair. It is sim- 
ply permitting others to do, in all matters of politics and 
religion, freely, in our presence and society, what we 
claim the privilege of doing in their presence and society. 
People who are intolerant— and we are informed that 
there are such in this country — are simply indecent. 
They are devoid of intellectual courtesy. They are 
boors who are out of place among a free people, and, no 
matter whom they may be, they ought to be persistently 
snubbed until they learn polite intellectual manners. 
The spirit of intolerance is a spirit of discourtesy and in- 
sult, and there is no more praise due a man, or a sect, 
for being tolerant, than there is due a man for being a 
gentleman ; and we never saw a gentleman yet who 
would not take praise for being a gentleman as involv- 
ing an insult. It is at least the thinnest of all virtues to 
brag about. 

There is a virtue lying in this region, though, alas ! 
but little known, which needs development. Toleration, 
as we have said, is a very thin affair. Men tolerate each 
other and each other's sentiments and opinions, and are 
much too apt to be content with that. They altogether 
overestimate the value of it, but beyond this there is in 
some quarters, and ought to be in all quarters, a sense 
of brotherhood among all honestly and earnestly inquir- 
ing souls. There is no reason why Dean Stanley and 
Mr. Darwin should not be the most affectionate friends. 
There is no good reason why Cardinal Manning and Mr. 
Matthew Arnold should not be on the most delightful 
terms of intimacy. There is no good reason why Mr. 



Religion and the Church. 33 

Frothingham and Dr. Hall, Dr. Draper and Dr. Taylor 
should not be bound up in a loving brotherhood. They 
undoubtedly tolerate one another now. It would be sim- 
ply indecent for them to do anything less, but we fear 
that we have not quite reached the period when these 
men, with a profound respect for one another's man- 
hood, truthfulness, and earnestness, recognize each other 
as seekers for truth, and love and delight in each other 
as such. We are all interested in the same things, but 
we happen to be regarding them from different angles. 

Some of the sincerest men in the world are the doubt- 
ers. 

" There is more faith in honest doubt, 
Believe me, than in half the creeds." 

These men get very little of the sympathy that by right 
belongs to them. They have as great a love for truth 
as anybody, and are looking for it, but by the constitu- 
tion of their minds, or by the power of an unfortunate 
education, or the influence of an untoward personal ex- 
perience, they find themselves thrown off into a region 
of skepticism, where they have no congenial companion- 
ship. They do not get even toleration, from those par- 
ticularly who inherit their creeds, and to whom faith is 
as natural as breathing. These men ought all and al- 
ways to be brought affectionately into the great brother- 
hood of truth-lovers and truth-seekers, and a Christian 
of any name who cannot throw his warmest sympathies 
around these, and regard them with a peculiarly affec- 
tionate interest, must necessarily be a very poor sort of 
creature. All honest truth-seekers are always truth- 
finders, and all have something in possession that will be 
of advantage to the others. The differences between 
them are sources of wealth to the whole. 

This is true of all truth-seekers, and it is particularly 
true of the different sects of Christendom. Let not the 
2* 



34 Every-Day Topics. 

Catholic think for a moment that he has nothing to learn 
of the Protestant, and let not the Protestant think that 
he holds all truth to the exclusion of his Catholic brother. 
The fact that all these sects exist and find vitality enough 
in their ideas to keep them prosperously together, shows 
that there is something to be learned, everywhere, and 
among them all, and that the policy is poor which shuts 
them away from one another's society. It is better to 
remember that truth is one, and that those who are 
earnestly after it, whether they deny Christianity or pro- 
fess it, whether they are called by one name or another, 
belong together, in one great sympathetic brotherhood of 
affection and pursuit. 

"Is Life Worth Living?" 
Mr. Curtis once asked Mr. Greeley, in response to 
a similar question put to him by the great editor, 
" How do you know, Mr. Greeley, when you have suc- 
ceeded in a public address ? " Mr. Greeley, not averse 
to the perpetration of a joke at his own expense, replied : 
" When more stay in than go out." Mr. Mallock's fa- 
mous question, answered by himself in a weak way, and 
repeated by Professor Mivart, and answered in a 
stronger way, is practically voted on every day, by the 
entire human race, and decided in the affirmative. 
" More stay in than go out," for reasons very much less 
important than those considered by Mr. Mallock and 
Professor Mivart. There are great multitudes of men 
who possess neither the Roman Catholic faith nor Tight- 
ness of life nor love, who yet live out their lives in the 
firm conviction that it pays them to live — men who are 
open to no high considerations, such as would have 
weight with the Mallocks and Mivarts. 

There is a great pleasure in conscious being. So uni- 
versal is this, that when a man occasionally takes his 



Religion and the Church. 35 

life, it is considered by those whom he leaves behind 
him as presumptive proof that he is insane. 

We say of a man who designedly ends his life that he 
is not in his right mind. One of the most pathetic things 
about death is the bidding good-bye to a body that has 
been the nursery and home of the spirit which it has 
charmed through the ministry of so many senses. 

" For who, to dumb forgetfulness a prey, 
This pleasing anxious being e'er resigned, 
Left the warm precincts of the cheerful day, 
Nor cast one longing, ling'ring look behind? " 

Men find their pay for living in various ways. Hope 
may lie to them, but they always believe her, neverthe- 
less. The better things to come, of which she tells all 
men, become, indeed, the substance of the things de- 
sired ; that is, expectation is a constant joy and inspira- 
tion. The pay for this day's trouble and toil is in the 
reward which is expected to-morrow. That reward may 
never come, but the hope remains ; and so long as that 
lives, it pays to live. It pays some men to live, that 
they may make money, and command the power that 
money brings. To what enormous toils and sacrifices 
the love and pursuit of money urge a great multitude of 
men ! The judgment of these men as to whether life is 
worth living is not to be taken at life's close, when they 
sum up their possessions and what they have cost, but 
while they are living and acting. A man whose life is 
exhausted may well conclude that what he has won is 
vanity ; but it was not vanity to him while he was win- 
ning it, and, in the full possession of his powers, he be- 
lieved that life was worth living. 

Who shall estimate the inestimable ? Who shall 
weigh the value of the loves of life ? There are very few 
who do not see a time in life when all their trials would 



36 Every-Day Topics. 

be considered a cheap price to pay for the love they ex- 
ercise and possess. The lover who wins and possesses 
his mistress, and the mother who carries a man-child 
upon her bosom, drink of a cup so full and so delicious 
that, whatever may be the ills of life, they sink into in- 
significance by its side. A single year of a great satisfy- 
ing love spreads its charm over all the period that fol- 
lows, and often sweetens a whole life. We have said that 
there is great pleasure in conscious being, and the state- 
ment covers more ground than at first view appears, for 
all pleasures are simply augmentations of the conscious- 
ness of being. The pleasure that comes of wine is of 
this character — it raises and intensifies the consciousness 
of being, and makes the treasure of life itself for the 
moment more abundant. It is so not only with all sen- 
sual delights, but with all mental and spiritual pleasures. 
They stimulate and enlarge the sense of life, — the con- 
sciousness of living existence, — conferring upon it only 
new forms and flavors. 

The pursuit of money is only one of the pursuits of 
life. Fame, power, literary achievement, art in a hun- 
dred forms, social eminence — all these and more are 
objects of pursuit, so absorbing and delightful that men 
find abundant reward in them. Life is quite worth liv- 
ing to all those who find engaging objects of pursuit, and 
especially to those who win success in their pursuits. 
We repeat, therefore, that, by almost a unanimous vote, 
the human race practically decides every day that life is 
worth living. Mr. Mallock thinks it is worth living pro- 
vided a man has faith in a great church ; and Professor 
Mivart— a Catholic himself— thinks life's highest values 
are in the doing of duty and in love. We should be the 
last to claim that happiness is the highest aim of life, 
and that, unless that is secured, life is a failure, and not 
worth living. To do right, to sacrifice one's self for love 



Religion and the Church. 37 

— these are better things than pleasure. To love and 
to be loved — these are things that pay. To be conscious 
of nobility of character and unselfishness of life ; to be 
conscious that our lives are brought into affectionate re- 
lations with other and harmonious life — what are these 
but life's highest values ? What are these but the high- 
est satisfactions of conscious being ? 

If this be true, — that character and duty and love are 
better than pleasure and better than any success without 
them, — then there is no human being who needs to say 
that life is not worth living. But the people who do not 
succeed, who are unloved, who live lives of pain and 
want and weakness — what is there for these ? A chance 
for conscious nobility of character and life ; and if this 
be not enough, as it rarely is, a faith, not in a great 
church, but in a good God, and an immortality that will 
right the wrongs and heal the evils of the present life, 
and round into completeness and symmetry its imper- 
fections and deformities. Is it not foolish, after all, to 
raise the question of success or failure in treating a life 
that is only germinal or fractional ? 

The Sermon. 
We hear, in the different pulpits, a good many sorts 
of sermons in these days, and from the pews we hear a 
good many theories and ideas about sermons. In the 
ministry of the Christian religion, the sermon seems to be 
of growing importance, among all sects. The forms of 
worship vary very little. Each sect has its prescribed, 
or voluntary and yet habitual, formula of prayer and 
praise, to which it adheres generation after generation. 
It makes more or less of singing at different times, and 
has its liturgical spasms ; but, on the whole, each sect 
adheres to its form of worship with great tenacity and 
steadiness. The sermon, however, is subject to great 



38 Every- Day Topics. 

changes, and is the result partly of the general culture 
of its time, and partly of theories of preaching enter- 
tained by the church. 

The Episcopal Church in this country, like its mother 
in England, is inclined more than any other denomina- 
tion, except the Catholic, to make much of the service 
and little of the sermon. The average sermon that one 
hears in the established church in England, as in the 
English continental chapels, is only a brief and unim- 
pressive homily, written with great propriety, and deliv- 
ered not only without passion, but without the slightest 
attempt at oratory. To a man thirsting for religious 
impression, or for intellectual stimulus, nothing drearier, 
or more unrewarding, can be imagined than this kind of 
performance. Much more is made of the sermon in 
this country than in England, however, and the Episco- 
pal Church could not hold its own, and grow in impor- 
tance and influence as it does among the American people 
without a better sermon than prevails in the English 
Church. The Brookses and Tyngs are among the most 
impressive preachers we have, and the Episcopal sermon 
is now generally like the sermons of the other sects — 
full of intellect, vitality and eloquence. Still the lean- 
ing is toward the service, as the thing of paramount im- 
portance. 

In all the other denominations, however, the sermon 
is the supreme thing. The prayers and the music are 
simply preliminaries and supplementaries to the sermon. 
The point of first interest is the topic, in its announce- 
ment ; and the question as to whether the attendance at 
church has paid is determined, almost entirely, by the 
character of the discourse which follows. Whether this 
partiality to the sermon is right or not, we do not care 
to judge. We take the fact as it stands, for the purpose 
of saying a word on the kind of sermon demanded in 



Religion and the Church. 39 

these days. Among preachers who are not "sensa- 
tional," as the word goes, we hear a good deal now about 
and against " sensational preaching." We confess that 
we like sensational preaching, if by the phrase is indi- 
cated that which produces a sensation. If by this phrase, 
however, it is intended to indicate the kind which is ac- 
companied by theatrical tricks, and startling phrase- 
ology, and rough pulpit manners, we dislike it as much 
as any one can. A clown is never more out of place 
than when he is in a pulpit ; and we may add that the 
true orator is never more in his proper place than there. 
A man who has the power to wake up his audience intel- 
lectually, to rouse their sympathies, to address them by 
motives so powerful as to exalt them to determination or 
to action, is the true sensational preacher. This is the 
man who attracts a crowd ; and the man who can be 
relied upon to do ■ this every Sunday, is the man who 
holds the crowd. 

A great deal of fault is found with " intellectual 
preaching," but it is pretty well understood now that 
nothing else will be attractive. The world knows its 
duty well enough now. The sermon that is simply good, 
that is charged only with the commonplaces of religion 
and morality, and never rises into eloquence or a high 
range of thought or feeling, might almost as well go un- 
preached. It accomplishes little beyond disgusting its 
hearers with going to church. The obvious, common 
things that may be said about any given text of Scrip- 
ture, are exactly the things that ought never to be said in 
the pulpit, for in these things the pulpit is no wiser than 
the pew. One of the great reasons for the lack of pop- 
ular attraction to the pulpit lies in the fact that brains 
enough are not put into the sermons. The thinking in 
a sermon must be superior to the average thinking of an 
audience, to produce any effect upon it, and if, in these 



40 Every-Day Topics. 

days, any man — no matter how gifted he may be — imag- 
ines that he may halt in his enterprise of earnest and 
profound preparation for his preaching, without damage 
to himself or his work, he is sadly mistaken. His slip- 
shod stuff will be detected every time, and pass to his 
discredit. 

We know of no profession or calling so exacting in its 
demands as that of the pulpit ; we know of none that is 
capable of winning greater rewards of influence and 
affection, but in these days the pulpit is a bad place for 
a lazy man, or one who is inclined in any way to under- 
rate the popular intelligence concerning both his profes- 
sion and himself. Goodish homilies have gone out, and 
high discourses have come in. The best thinking that 
the best men can do, the best English they can com- 
mand, and the most impressive delivery of which they 
are the masters, are called for, every time they appear 
before those who have sufficiently loved and trusted 
them to place them in their high office. The public are 
not deceived. No facility of words can cover sterility of 
thinking. A preacher who does not do his best every 
time is in constant danger of doing himself irretrievable 
damage. 

There are certain economies of pulpit oratory that 
demand more attention from our most successful preach- 
ers of sermons. It is a great temptation to a powerful 
man who finds a plastic congregation in his hands, to 
continue his conquest of conviction and emotion beyond 
the point of triumph. There is a charm in mastery 
which leads to long sermons — to talking after the sermon 
is done. This breeds uneasiness, and always detracts 
from the best result. It is always a mistake, and we 
know of a dozen eminent men who are constantly mak- 
ing it. 

After all, the best and most important qualifications for 



Religion and the Church. 41 

preaching a good sermon is an overmastering belief in 
Christianity. There is so much preaching done that 
leads to admiration of the preacher rather than to faith 
in and love of Christ, that earnestness cannot be too 
much insisted on, or too highly estimated. So it is an 
excellent thing for a preacher to be a Christian, if he de- 
sires to accomplish by his preaching anything beyond 
his own elevation. 

Mr. Huxley's Visit. 

We are not among those who deprecated Mr. Huxley's 
late visit to America, and certainly not among those 
who regret that he came. There was an indefinable 
dread of the man among many religious circles, as if he 
were not only an enemy, but a very powerful enemy, 
who was pretty sure to do mischief. The result, we are 
sure, not only disappointed them, but failed to give the 
expected support to those who have been inclined to 
favor the Darwinian hypothesis. The first lecture in- 
troduced a trick quite unworthy a fearless man of science, 
viz., that of making Milton bear the onus of the Mosaic 
account of the Creation. To whip the Bible around the 
shoulders of the great poet, and assume to fight a man, 
when, in truth, he intended to fight what all believers 
agree in regarding as a sacred book, and most of them 
as an inspired and authoritative book, was not a pretty 
or a manly thing to do. It was a cunning performance, 
we admit, but it was the performance of a pettifogger, 
and detracted very materially from the popular respect 
which had been accorded to the man and his utterances. 

It is to be presumed that Mr. Darwin's principal apos- 
tle would present his facts and his arguments in the 
most convincing way possible to him. He took three 
evenings for the task, and had the field all to himself; 
but we do not hesitate to say that he failed in the " de- 



42 Every-Day Topics. 

monstrative evidence " offered in his closing lecture to 
fulfil the promises made in the first two. Had he de- 
monstrated the soundness of his theory, people would 
have believed in it. That the most of them did not, 
ought to be regarded by Mr. Huxley as evidence — worthy, 
at least, of his consideration — that his " demonstrative 
evidence " demonstrated nothing. For, let it be remem- 
bered, the religious mind of the country is not as much 
afraid of the theory of evolution as it was, and is not proof 
against conviction, as it might once have been. It has ap- 
prehended and accepted the fact that it takes as great a 
power to originate an order of beings through evolution 
as by a direct act of creation, and that to bind up all the 
possibilities and potencies of life in protoplasmic masses, 
or ascidian cells, is as marked an exhibition of Almighti- 
ness and infinite ingenuity as it would be to speak into 
existence the perfected creatures which we know, and 
which we are. 

We do not hesitate to say that the audiences which 
assembled to listen to Mr. Huxley were tractable audi- 
ences. They were not only tractable, but they were 
capable. They were fully adequate to the understanding 
of his theory, and the weighing of his evidences and 
arguments ; and we have yet to learn that he largely, or 
even appreciably, increased the number of his disci- 
ples. Men went away feeling that, after all, the theory 
of evolution was nothing but a theory, — that it is still so 
much an hypothesis that it can lay no valid claim to 
a place in science. Certainly, Mr. Huxley shook no 
soundly reasoning man's belief in God as the author 
of all life. " In the beginning, God created the heaven 
and the earth." When that beginning w r as, — how many 
ages that beginning covered, — nobody pretends at this 
day to know. Everybody knows, however, that a stream 
can rise no higher than its fountain. If the conduits and 



Religion and the Church. 43 

receptacles into which that stream has been poured are 
capable of retaining it, and incapable of conducting it 
further, it may not rise so high. It seems to us repug- 
nant to human reason that a low form of life, uninformed 
by a higher life, has the power to evolve a form of 
life higher than itself. There is not an analogy of 
nature which does not militate against such a conclu- 
sion. There are none of the lessons of science which 
do not lead directly away from it. God may work 
toward creative ends through processes of evolution, or 
he may not. A horse may have been derived from a 
three-toed animal, one of whose toenails spread into a 
hoof, with its wonderful tarsus and metatarsus, or he 
may not. A man may have descended, or ascended, 
from a monkey, or he may have been created by a di- 
vine fiat. It matters very little, so long as God is recog- 
nized as the author of life, and the designer of its multi- 
tudinous forms. 

And here is where all the trouble and fear originate. 
The Christian theist shrinks from losing his God. He 
finds that as philosophers go mousing among second 
causes, they lose the disposition to look up. When Mr. 
Tyndall asserts that he finds in matter the promise and 
the potency of all forms and qualities of life, the Chris- 
tian sees that God is left out of the question altogether, — 
that the creation is left without a creator, that life is left 
without an author, that his hope is vain, and that his 
faith is also vain. He is accounted but an animal of the 
highest class, that propagates other animals, and he and 
they are to die, and come to an end. He can contem- 
plate such a conclusion only with horror. His life loses 
all its meaning in the presence of it. If this is all ; if we 
are only animals ; if we have no responsibility ; if our 
destiny does not take hold of eternity, he will say, " let 
us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die." 



44 Every -Day Topics. 

It seems to us to be about time for Christian men and 
women, and especially for Christian teachers, to stop 
shaking in the presence of science and scientific men, in 
the fear that God is to be counted out of the universe, 
for such a conclusion is simply impossible. The re- 
ligious element in man, in all ages and among all peo- 
ples, is, perhaps, the highest proof we have that a Being 
exists who is to be worshipped, loved, adored, obeyed. 
Beyond this lies the impossibility of conceiving the i( be- 
ginning " of anything without a supreme first cause. 
To suppose that a nebulous mass appeared in one of the 
interstellar spaces, of itself; that, after a time, motion 
began in it, of itself, and went on until the whole mass 
revolved and 'commenced condensation ; that one after 
another it threw off rings which cracked and curled up 
into burning worlds, always condensing and cooling, 
and revolving around the great mass in the centre ; that 
in one of these worlds, incandescent at first, there went 
on for ages and eons the processes that were to fit it for 
the residence of life, and that then life appeared upon 
it, of itself, in such myriad forms and adaptations that 
the most industrious and ingenious human inquirer is 
left utterly at a loss to comprehend so much as the hum- 
blest plant at his feet, or the tiniest insect, to say noth- 
ing of his own body and his own mind, — we say that to 
suppose that all this took place without an infinite ex- 
ercise of power and ingenuity, — without intelligent 
adaptation of means to ends, — is to suppose an absurdity 
which no healthy reason, healthily working, can possibly 
accept. 

It is not only time for Christian men to stop shaking 
before science and scientific men, but it is time to re- 
ceive them as discoverers of God's works and ways of 
working. We have learned a great deal from them, and 
we are to learn a great deal more. We are not con- 



Religion and the Church. 45 

cerned in their conclusions. We may pity them for their 
blindness and egotism, but we must respect them for 
their earnest work and their honesty. It will all come 
out right in the end. Their work is only begun, and, in 
the meantime, God will not be left without witnesses. 
Side by side with the advancement of science, the reign 
of religion advances in the world. Many of our old be- 
liefs will be cast aside ; many of our old dogmas will be 
shown to be baseless ; but the belief in God and the 
confidence of his paternal interest in man will not only 
never die out, but they will increase with every onward 
step that science achieves. 

Falling from High Places. 
High Christian society, both in New York and Brook- 
lyn, has been shocked again and again during the past 
few years, by the fall from rectitude of its eminent 
members. These cities have not been singular in their 
experiences. Philadelphia, Boston, and Chicago, have 
all furnished their instances of fall from high Christian 
and social positions into infamy. Men who have been 
trusted have betrayed their trusts. Men who have 
" made a good profession " have shamefully or shame- 
lessly belied their profession. Whole families have gone 
down into financial ruin and social disgrace with these 
men. Some of the delinquents are serving out their 
terms in the State prison, and some of their innocent 
victims and family friends are in lunatic asylums. The 
whole matter has been horrible — too horrible to dwell 
upon, or talk about. It has even been too solemn and 
suggestive to gossip over. Under the revelations of 
these great iniquities, carried on for years in secret, men 
have trembled for themselves and their friends. It has 
been feared that these were but the out-croppings of an 
underlying mass of infidelity to truth and honor. We 



46 Every-Day Topics. 

have almost dreaded to look into the morning papers, 
lest some more shocking fall than all should be re- 
vealed. 

Of course there has been a good deal of comment upon 
the subject — wise and otherwise. The scoffer at reli- 
gion has had his fling. The conscious scamp has had 
his little crow over his long-bruited conclusion that men 
are all alike, and that all are scamps as far as they dare 
to be. But the good men and women, in the church and 
out of it, have taken the whole matter very sadly to 
heart ; and they wonder what it means. Why is it, at 
this particular time, that there should fall upon the 
Christian church such disgrace in the fall of its mem- 
bers ? Has Christianity no hold upon men ? Does it 
give them no strength under temptation ? Does it in no 
way put them beyond temptation ? How is it that men 
can go on punctiliously in the performance of their out- 
ward Christian duties, while consciously guilty of offences 
against the law which, if proved, would consign their 
persons to prison and their names to public execration ? 

There is a good deal that might be said upon the 
matter, but there are only two things which we care to 
notice. The first is that we have passed and are passing 
through an exceptional period in political, social, and 
financial history. Smooth times would have spared us 
most of the disasters which we so sadly lament. The 
civil war furnished great opportunities for making money 
rapidly, and the men who made it rapidly raised their 
style of living to a luxurious grade. So many made 
money swiftly that they had the power to revolutionize 
the general style of living. In this way, life became 
more expensive to everybody, and the most extraordi- 
nary exertions were made by all men to win a share in 
the general prosperity, and to display a share in their 
dresses, equipages, and homes. We did not hear very 



Religion and the Church. 47 

much about betrayals of trust while the prosperity was 
in progress ; but when the times began to pinch, and 
men were trying to bridge over little gaps in their in- 
come, without showing to their families or their friends 
that they were in trouble, the mischief began. The 
first steps were undoubtedly very small, and were in- 
tended to be immediately retraced ; but the pinch in 
the times did not relax, and the false steps never were 
retraced and never could be retraced. The following 
ones were the steps that a man makes when dragged at 
the tail of a hangman's cart — irresistible. 

Now we are simply harvesting the crop. The mis- 
chief began long since, under the pressure of special 
and exceptional temptations. But ought not Christianity 
to have been equal to such an emergency as this ? This 
is the question the church is asking of itself. This is the 
question the world is asking of the church, and this is 
the second point that we have thought worth considering 
in this article. 

Now why does the world ask of the church such a 
question as this ? Who taught the world its morality ? 
Where did it acquire its nice notions of personal honor 
and honesty ? Whose influence has planted in the 
public mind the sense of integrity and purity — the sense 
of the heinousness of infidelity to private and public 
trusts ? Christianity has been the world's teacher, and 
it only asks the question which the church has taught it 
to ask. Why does the church feel through all its mem- 
bership the deep disgrace of these untoward revelations, 
save for the reason that it is truly Christian, and is per- 
meated and moved by the spirit which these crimes have 
violated. If the church were trying to cover up these 
crimes and to shield these criminals ; if she were not 
shocked and grieved to her centre ; if she were not sadly 
questioning herself as to the causes of these terrible 



48 Every-Day Topics. 

backslidings, she might be flouted with them. As it is, 
no decent man will fail to give her his sympathy. 

Feeling just this, and saying so much as this, we be- 
lieve that we have the liberty to say a little more. We 
feel at least the liberty to ask a question or two. Is it 
not possible that in the pulpit teaching of the present day 
we make a little too much of salvation, and not quite 
enough of righteousness ? — a little too much of the tree, 
and not quite enough of the fruit ? — a little too much 
about a " saving faith," and not quite enough of good 
works ? — a little too much of believing, and not quite 
enough of living ? — a little too much of dogma, and not 
quite enough of character ? Certainly the pulpit has 
erred in this matter, and erred not a little. It is the 
weak place, not only in modern preaching, but in modern 
orthodox theology of all names ; and if the church wishes 
to learn the lesson of her failures, she will find it here. 
A man whose principal motive is to get himself saved by 
compliance with certain hard conditions of repentance 
and service, is a pretty poor staff to lean upon in the 
emergency of a temptation which attacks his selfishness 
from another direction. Our revival preaching, unless 
supplemented by a long course of instruction in morality, 
is pretty poor stuff. It serves its temporary purpose 
well enough, perhaps ; but if conversion is anything less 
than the beginning of a drill and training in righteous- 
ness, it amounts to very little. 

The Bondage of the Pulpit. 
The phrase which furnishes the title of this article is 
not original. We borrow it of a distinguished orthodox 
theological professor in Rochester, who, having omitted 
the articles which he wrote upon it from his " Free Lance " 
book, has got through with it, we suppose, and has thus 
left it for the use of those who are not likely to become 



Religion and the Church. 49 

theological professors. We choose it now to introduce 
a few words with relation to the criticism of certain 
papers upon recent articles of ours on the proscription 
of certain ministers for opinion's sake. 

First, if we have seemed to blame the ecclesiastical 
bodies that deposed Dr. Blauvelt and Mr. Miller from 
the ministerial office, let us place ourselves right. We 
have not intended to blame them. We do not see how, 
regarding the work of these men as they did, and under 
the obligations of constitution and rule which were upon 
them, they could have done otherwise. They were not 
at liberty to do otherwise. However much personal 
liking for, or sympathy with these writers, the ecclesias- 
tical bodies may have felt, they had no choice in deal- 
ing with them. Dr. Blauvelt and Mr. Miller had thought 
and come to conclusions outside of the machine, and the 
machine was obliged to cut off their heads. The trouble 
is with the machine, and the machine and the machine- 
makers and defenders are what we have our quarrel with. 

It will be noticed that although the men in question 
have been cast out of the ministry, they have not been 
cast out of the church. That is entirely another thing. 
They may still be — as all believe them to be — good 
Christians, but they are not good sectarians ; and that 
is alt that this deposition means* They have modified 
their creed without in any way degrading their Christian 
character or Christian life. Indeed, the latter may have 
been very much improved and elevated. At any rate, 
their behavior shows very well by the side of that of the 
bodies which deposed them. Now what we want to 
show is simply this : that men — Christian men — have 
been cut off from useful positions, not because they have 
not Christian characters, lives, purposes, influence, but 
because, following the light which God has given them 
in their reason, and loyal to the voice of conscience, they 
3 



50 Every-Day Topics. 

have declared that some of their views of Christian truth 
are changed. This is what we find fault with, viz., that 
the church — the sectarian church, and we hardly have 
any other — is not large enough to think in ; that it vir- 
tually puts a limitation to progress in the development 
of Christian opinion. We have no quarrel with men ; 
we have no quarrel with newspapers. We would like to 
do what we can to make a larger place for Christian 
teachers. Do they object to it ? Can they not be 
trusted in a larger place ? Would they be likely to 
abuse their liberty if their creeds were shorter and more 
elastic ? Then we must reverse all our American ideas 
of the influence of liberty upon the intelligent human 
mind. 

The Christian at Work undertakes to expose to us 
the absurdity of our fault-finding with the degradation 
from, office of Messrs. Blauvelt and Miller in these words : 

11 But let us put to the accomplished editor of Scribner s one 
question : Suppose he accepted an article from an author, to be 
written on a certain subject, for the editorial department of Scrib- 
ner s ; suppose the article contained an urgent plea for Commun- 
ism and Socialism, honestly advocating them as essential to the 
welfare of society and in accordance with the spirit of our age ; — 
would the editor print that article ; and if not would there be 
* anything like free thought or free speech within the ' limits of the 
Scribner covers ? — would there be a magazine writer who would 
not realize that 'his brain is imprisoned and his hands tied? ' 
Does not the editor of Scribner see how absurd his position is ? " 

Is it as bad as this ? Can the relation which exists 
between the constituting power and the minister in of- 
fice be compared to that which exists between an edi- 
tor and his subordinates ? Is he but a mouthpiece of 
embodied ecclesiastical opinion ? Has he absolutely no 
liberty at all ? Are reason, conscience, heavenly teach- 
ing and inspiration for which the minister prays, only to 
have play within certain bounds, imposed by outside 



Religion and the Church. 51 

human authority ? Then the teacher is indeed a slave, 
and is degraded by the act which installs him in office. 

But the comparison is not entirely fair to us or to the 
writer's own side of the question. The conditions are 
not quite so bad as he represents them. He has seen fit 
to# confine his illustration to editorial articles — to the 
editor's individual opinions. He would be more just if 
he would apply it to the whole magazine, and there we 
should meet him with the statement that while the drift 
and purpose of the Monthly are strongly along the lines 
of religion and morality — of liberty and purity and tem- 
perance and Christian culture — so strongly that no fool 
can mistake them, and no fool does mistake them — we 
are all the time publishing opinions which we do not be- 
lieve in. We should not be disposed to suppress a plea 
for socialism or communism, if it were well written, by a 
true and honest man, though we hold the doctrines which 
these words popularly represent in lively detestation. We 
have always been trying to give the world of thinkers a fair 
chance, and to let the people know what honest thinkers 
are thinking, and what they are thinking about. Orthodox 
and hetero*dox alike have been welcomed in these pages, 
and the liberty of the latter has always seemed to make 
them more interesting writers. The orthodox are always 
running their machine, whether as politicians or secta- 
rians, and never dare to get outside of it. We never fail 
to know what they are going to say. We have been 
hearing it for nearly sixty years, and, while it did very 
well for the first thirty, the reiteration becomes tiresome. 

We heard defined, a few Sundays since, from a pulpit 
as generous as it is able, the distinction between a pro- 
fession and a vocation. There are men who choose to 
be preachers. Having carefully weighed all other pro- 
fessions in the balance, they adopt the ministerial pro- 
fession \ yet a great multitude of them have no vocation. 



52 Every- Day Topics. 

They are not called to preach. It is not a u woe " to 
them if they do not preach. They do not preach be- 
cause they must preach. We can imagine a set of sim- 
ple professional men, who will be willing to take their 
creed and stay with it, and stand by it, and persecute 
their betters who, with the vocation to preach, take thejr 
license from the highest source, and the liberty that al- 
ways goes with it. When such men as Swing and Eg- 
gleston and Murray, with their crowded churches, find 
themselves happier outside of the great sectarian organ- 
izations than within them — more attractive, more use- 
ful, more influential — the people ought to learn some- 
thing of the vivifying effect of Christian liberty, and the 
necessity of either casting aside, or, if that be not prac- 
ticable, of greatly modifying, the old machines. A min- 
ister who apprehends enough of essential Christian truth to 
be a thorough Christian himself, in character and in life, is 
good enough to teach, if he has a divine vocation to teach, 
and the machine that cuts off his head is a wretched 
machine, which, in our opinion, ought to be smashed. 

But what a lot of " religious newspapers " would be 
smashed under it ! Ah ! We had not thought of that ! 
How we should dislike to lose The New York Observer 
and The Congregationalist ! (Handkerchief.) 

Sunday Bummers. 
The poor we have always with us, and whenever we 
will we may do them good. And the will to do them 
good, in a spiritual and religious sense, at least, is very 
genuine and very abounding. The churches, as a rule, 
cherish no desire more sincere than that of preaching 
the gospel to the poor, without money and without price. 
We do not stop to inquire how much of the proselyting 
spirit may be connected with this desire, or what worth- 
less motives may sophisticate it. Their wish to do good 



Religion and the Church, 53 

to the poor is genuine enough, and to do it at their own 
expense. If the poor could know how heartily they 
would be welcomed in houses of worship frequented 
mainly by the rich and the well-to-do, they would cer- 
tainly lose their shyness, and learn a kindlier feeling for 
those more fortunate than themselves. It is undoubtedly 
the business of the rich to provide religious privileges 
for the poor, and the duty of the poor to accept them. 
They may do this without loss of self-respect, and with- 
out the cultivation of the pauper spirit. 

There is, however, a real difference between " God's 
poor" and man's poor. There are great multitudes 
who, do what they w r ill and what they can, must always 
be poor. Few and inefficient hands to labor, and many 
mouths to feed, sickness, misfortune — all the causes of 
adversity — produce poverty which seems to be remedi- 
less ; and those who are afflicted with such poverty may 
legitimately be called " God's poor." These are the 
involuntary poor, enveloped and embarrassed by cir- 
cumstances which render it impossible for them to rise 
out of poverty. For these, the Christian man will do 
what he can without pauperizing them, and he knows 
that there is no form of beneficence so little likely to do 
them harm as that of providing for their religious instruc- 
tion and inspiration. He knows also that the rectifica- 
tion and elevation of habits which are the natural out- 
come of religious and spiritual influences, are ministers 
always to the poor man's temporal prosperity. 

In contradistinction from these, there are those whom 
we may properly call u man's poor." They are people 
who spend upon themselves, out of an income not gener- 
ous, perhaps, but competent, so much that they have 
nothing left with which to bear their portion of the bur- 
dens of society. They live well, they dress well, they 
maintain what they consider a respectable position in 



54 Every-Day Topics. 

society, they go to the theatre whenever it may seem desi- 
rable ; they spend upon themselves and their luxuries 
their entire income, and habitually steal their preaching. 
Many of these people are quite regular in their attend- 
ance upon the Sunday services of the church, but they 
never unite with it, or assume a single responsibility 
connected with it. There are churches in New York, as 
we presume there may be in most cities, which are the 
favorite resorts of the bummers — churches which, by the 
numbers in attendance on Sundays, seem to be prosper- 
ous, but which, from the fact that they are so largely 
made up of bummers, cannot support themselves or 
their pastors. These worshippers make a very well- 
dressed congregation, but they offer a very poor field for 
preaching and pastoral work. They do not even intro- 
duce themselves to the pastors to whose preaching they 
listen. When they become a little ashamed of this Sun- 
day bumming at one church, they go to another. The 
sexton knows them at last, and understands exactly what 
they are and what they are doing. A little self-denial 
would give all these people the right to a pew, and save 
them from the meanness of appropriating that which 
honest people are obliged to pay for. 

Now, there is nothing in the world better calculated to 
bring dry-rot into character than this Sunday bumming. 
To go week after week to church, assuming no responsi- 
bility, paying for no privilege, and taking no part what- 
ever except that of a thief or sponge, can have no influ- 
ence better than that of unfitting a man for society. He 
who is not one of God's poor has no right to privileges 
that he does not pay for, in or out of the church, and 
the man who becomes willing to avail himself of the 
generosity of others, in order that he may spend more 
upon his artificial wants, becomes a pauper at heart and 
a thief in fact. 



Religion and the Church. 55 

The great majority of Sunday bummers ought to be 
ashamed of themselves, for even their church-going very 
often grows out of their love of respectability and of the 
usages of respectable society. But the young, and par- 
ticularly young men, should be warned against the prac- 
tice. The Sunday bummer is nearly always the occu- 
pant of a boarding-house, a fact which at least partly 
accounts for his demoralization. We do not think it 
often happens that the occupant of a genuine home 
steals his preaching. All sorts of moral obliquities and 
social loosenesses are generated in boarding-houses — 
and Sunday bumming among the rest. A man without a 
home is a pretty poor member of society, as a rule. It 
is not apt to occur to him that he has any stake or any 
duty in society, so he takes what society gives him, and 
avails himself of the privilege of squatting upon the rest. 
Young men coming to the city to live — for it must be 
remembered that the Sunday bummer is peculiarly the 
product of the city — should by all means avoid a habit 
which will always tell against them. The first thing a 
young man starting out into independent life should do 
is to take squarely upon his shoulders the social burdens 
that belong to him. The policy breeds manliness and 
self-respect and will remove him from all liability to be- 
come the poor creature known as the Sunday bummer. 

"The Machine" in New England. 
There is a thrifty manufacturing village, about five 
miles from Springfield, in Massachusetts, called Indian 
Orchard, and there is a Congregational church there, 
which, some years since, called to be its pastor the Rev. 
James F. Merriam, the son of an excellent orthodox 
deacon in Doctor Buckingham's church in Springfield. 
The church had known the young man from his youth 
up — known his history, his opinions, his influence. He 



56 Every-Day Topics. 

had already had one settlement in the town of Farming- 
ton, Connecticut, where he had been much beloved. 
Mr. Merriam accepted the call of the Indian Orchard 
church, and a council of Congregational ministers was 
called together to go through the formalities of installa- 
tion. It so happened, however, that the young man was 
an independent thinker, and could not state his ortho- 
doxy exactly in terms satisfactory to the council, and 
that he was " shaky " on the dogma of everlasting pun- 
ishment. So far as we are able to learn, the only other 
point of doubtful orthodoxy related to the atonement, 
and the following are Mr. Merriam's own words as to 
this : " While we may differ as to philosophical state- 
ments of it, I believe I am at one with our accepted in- 
terpretation as to the bottom truth, viz.: that God in 
Chrises death, suffered in his own divine nature for us, 
and that it signified God's free forgiveness to the repent- 
ant of their sins." 

Well, the council voted eight to six, not to install the 
candidate — mainly, we understand, because he was riot 
sound on the subject of everlasting punishment. Six of 
the fourteen indicated by their votes either that, in their 
opinion, he was sound, or that his opinions concerning 
that dogma were not such as would interfere with his 
usefulness as a pastor and religious teacher. The coun- 
cil dissolved, having done what it could to shut the can- 
didate's mouth and deprive the people of Indian Orchard 
of the pastor of their choice. Then the people, spurn- 
ing the action of the council, engaged Mr. Merriam to 
supply their pulpit, and to become in all respects their 
pastor and teacher ; and he, like a sensible man, ac- * 
cepted their invitation, protesting that there should be 
neither ill-feeling nor ill-speaking against the council 
which, he did not doubt, had performed its work most 
conscientiously. And it is noteworthy just here that the 



Religion and the Church. 57 

pastor and delegate from Farmington, the seat of Mr. 
Merriam's former pastorate, voted for his settlement. 
The result of the action of the council has been the 
welding of all hearts in Indian Orchard into one for the 
support of Mr. Merriam, the increase of his influence, and 
the production of a local excitement and discussion, the 
results of which will not be reckoned up in many years. 

We have noticed this case simply because it is an in- 
structive indication of the drift of the times. It indi- 
cates : 

First.— That " the machine " is no longer identical 
with the church. The machine does its work in the 
regular way, and the church repudiates it, tramples on 
it, tears up its decisions and throws them away. 

Second. — That the machine itself is undergoing a pro- 
cess of disorganization. The vote in the council needed 
but one change to make it a tie, and but two changes to 
reverse the decision. Out of fourteen persons, six either 
harmonized with Mr. Merriam's views, or did not con- 
sider them of importance as hinderances to his useful- 
ness. This is a tremendous change from the orthodoxy 
of the fathers, and shows very plainly that the orthodox 
creeds are in the future to have a more liberal interpre- 
tation, or that there will soon come, as a necessity, are- 
statement in a briefer or a materially modified form of 
the doctrines that make up the common opinion of the 
orthodox churches of the country. Our own judgment is 
that the votes given for Mr. Merriam were little else than 
demands for greater personal liberty in the interpretation 
of a creed. There must be this liberty if men are going 
to think at all, or else there must be self-stultification. 

Third. — That the action of the church at Indian Or- 
chard, and the astonishingly wide and earnest sympathy 
with it manifested by the churches in the vicinity, are 
proofs that dogmatic theology is losing its old hold upon 
3* 



58 Every -Day Topics. 

the popular mind. The people are in advance of the 
clergy in perceiving that the spirit of the Master, the 
heart filled with love and good-will and the life with un- 
selfishness and purity, are of very much more impor- 
tance than opinions and speculations upon the doctrine 
of everlasting punishment. To turn such a man as Mr. 
Merriam is universally conceded to be away from afield 
of usefulness, where his Christian spirit and sunny temper 
and helpful counsels and ardent love of men might be 
of the greatest use in helping souls to heaven, because 
he did not believe in the same sort of a hell that the 
council believed in, is not recognized by the churches as 
a wise — we had almost said a decent — thing to do. 

We have seen nothing more hopeful in these later 
times than the result of this Indian Orchard business. 
It is not only a triumph of Christian liberty for to-day, 
but it amounts to a declaration that there is to be more 
liberty in the future. It amounts, too, to a declaration 
that the religion of the head is losing its prominence in 
the religion of the churches. We are lamenting almost 
every week the fall of some man from a high position in 
the church, and we are beginning to find out what it 
means. We are beginning to learn that any form of or- 
ganized Christianity which makes much of faith and little 
of works — especially when that faith is made to cover 
long strings of dogmatic statements — which insists rig- 
idly on the possession of sound opinions and takes small 
note of an unsound heart, which discards ministers for 
heresy and hastens to cover up ministerial failures in 
morality and charity, which plants itself in the way of a 
true man because he cannot as a true man pronounce its 
shibboleth — we say that we are beginning to learn that 
any form of organized Christianity which does all this, 
just as naturally produces untrustworthy Christians as 
the earth produces weeds. Why should it not ? 



Religio7i and the Church, 59 

Let the concluding paragraph of Mr. MerrianVs ex- 
position of his faith, made before the Indian Orchard 
council be ours. He says : 

" In conclusion, I would add that I believe Christianity has as 
yet made but a beginning of the great work it is to do. I antici- 
pate a speedy and wonderful development ; because as the race 
grows intellectually and morally, so do its conceptions of Christ 
and the priceless import of his teaching become more adequate. 
I not only believe in, but most urgently advocate, a constant re- 
currence to him in all our work as churches to learn what our 
God is, and what our life here should be — and may be. When 
the church fully apprehends the tremendous power of the truths 
concerning Christ it upholds — when it is great enough, good 
enough, to wield its own weapon — I believe the progress of its 
redeeming work will be accelerated a hundred-fold." 

The Talk about Retribution. 

We have just passed through, or we are now passing 
through, one of the most disgusting episodes in relig- 
ious discussion that this country has ever witnessed. Its 
distinguishing characteristics have been irreverence and 
vulgarity. A modest pastor in Massachusetts was de- 
nied the pulpit to which he had been elected, on account 
of his failure to indorse the old orthodox dogma, con- 
cerning everlasting punishment. The council that took 
the responsibility of this proscription will live long 
enough, we hope, to see that it did a bad thing for itself, 
for the public, and for Christianity. The legitimate dis- 
cussion that grew out of this event, we have no fault to 
find with. It was needed, and it will not fail to have a 
good result. It was a matter that specially concerned 
the Christian world, and one that ought to have been 
discussed with the modesty and dignity which should dis- 
tinguish all treatment of the solemn questions that touch 
man's immortality. 

How was it treated ? Precisely as if it were a question 



6o Every-Day Topics. 

of politics and partisanship, — it was put to vote ! In the 
same spirit with which a train of passengers is canvassed 
on the eve of a great election, the newspaper press in- 
terviewed the neighboring ministers to see how they 
stood on the question of " hell," and to learn how they 
should have voted had they been members of the coun- 
cil whose action had started the discussion. We can 
imagine reporters doing just this, for " 'tis their nature 
to" — do just this. We do not know of any inquiry at 
which they would hesitate, if its answer would add 
piquancy to their contributions ; but, while we have no 
sympathy with this sort of enterprise, we spare our con- 
demnation of it in the presence of the fact that ministers 
in large numbers responded to their inquiries, with just 
as much apparent readiness as if the question had re- 
lated only to the Bland silver bill, or any other political 
measure or matter. If irreverence and vulgarity can go 
further than this, we have no idea in what direction they 
would travel. For ministers to consent to form an out- 
side council, and have their votes recorded by the public 
press on any special question that one of their own regu- 
larly constituted councils had decided, would have been 
a grave discourtesy, to say the least. To " stand and be 
counted " by a newspaper reporter, while they voted on 
the subject of everlasting punishment, was a surrender 
of their self-respect, a degradation of their office and 
position, and a fatal vulgarizing of the whole question, of 
which every man among them ought to be profoundly 
ashamed. 

When a question gets down as low as this, it is of 
course the privilege of every blackguard to besmirch it 
with his own style of handling. Colonel Ingersoll, an 
open unbeliever, — especially about the mouth, — has had 
his tilt at it. His words were diligently reported, and 
so loudly and persistently hawked about the streets by 



Religion and the Church. 61 

newsboys, that " Colonel Ingersoll " and " hell" will for- 
ever be associated in the public mind. 

The result of vulgarizing this question, in this way, is 
about as bad as it can be. No one, we suppose, will 
deny that it is to reduce it to one of very little moment. . 
A question on which men divide as partisans — a ques- 
tion which is decided by votes and not by arguments — a 
question which ostensibly rests in men's opinions, and 
is kicked about by the lowest orators and the lowest pro- 
cesses — is one that soon becomes deprived of its impor- 
tance ; and men who trembled in the prospect of endless 
suffering as the consequence of sin, cease, at last, to be- 
lieve in retribution altogether. No greater misfortune 
could happen to the world than this, for, if there is one 
thing in which revelation, science, and experience 
thoroughly agree, it is in the doctrine that suffering is, 
and must forever be, the consequence of sin. A man 
must trample on his own common-sense before he can 
believe that if he falls asleep in this world an impure, 
vicious, malignant man, he will wake up in the next a 
saint in heaven. To lose the idea of retribution is to 
lose the idea that holds the moral world in equipoise. 
To make God so tender and loving that without repent- 
ance and reformation He will " clear the guilty," is to 
degrade Him beneath human contempt. It blots out 
the sense of justice ; it transforms crime into a mistake ; 
it makes nothing of that which has filled this world 
with misery, and that which will fill any world with 
misery, so long as it may be persisted in. As long as 
consequence follows cause, just so long will retribution 
follow sin, whether in this world or the next ; and to 
blot out the belief in retribution in any man's mind is to 
demoralize and debauch him. 

Of the more dignified discussions of the question of 
everlasting punishment, it is proper to say a word. 



62 Every-Day Topics. 

That there is a considerable number of orthodox minis- 
ters who have given up, or are giving up their belief in 
this dogma, there is no question. The loosening hold 
upon it has been evident for many years. Endless tor- 
ment has been talked very little about in American and 
English pulpits for the last decade, and is rarely, except 
in a general way, presented as a motive to a religious 
life. The Indian Orchard minister has a multitude of 
sympathizers among his professional brethren, and the 
number is growing larger rather than smaller. The 
change comes partly of a change of views of the charac- 
ter of God, partly of a change of ideas concerning the 
office of punishment, and partly of new and better in- 
terpretations of Scripture. Such men as Canon Farrar 
and Rev. Dr. Whiton — eminent alike as orthodox Chris- 
tians and scholars — have had a great deal of influence 
on the professional mind of the day, in determining that 
phase of the question which scholarship can alone de- 
termine, viz., that which depends upon the exact inter- 
pretation of all that the sacred writings have to say upon 
it. Dr. Whiton's little book has made, and is making, 
a profound impression ; and so important is it deemed 
by some of those who have read it, that money has been 
freely put into his hand for its distribution. 

If there is to be a future life — and this is the faith of 
Christendom and heathendom — it goes without saying 
that there is to be retribution in it ; but, as we have 
read Dr. Whiton's book, there is no declaration in 
Scripture that the punishment is to be endless — and no 
declaration that it is not to be'. The book is quite 
worthy of any man's reading, and we commend it par- 
ticularly to those whose votes have been canvassed by 
the reporters. If they have not already perused it, they 
will learn that they voted before they had all the light 
there was to be had upon the subject. 



ART. 

American Art. 

ONE of the most notable facts connected with the 
Centennial Exhibition at Philadelphia was the uni- 
versal devotion to the art galleries. Every day testified 
of it, and every writer spoke of it. Whatever portion 
of the superb show was neglected, or only thinly at- 
tended, the art galleries were always full. However 
rapidly other departments may have been skimmed 
over, here the crowd lingered. It is the universal testi- 
mony, also, that this part of the exhibition was not in 
any way what could be desired. No country but Eng- 
land made an attempt to show its best things. Every- 
where, outside of the English pictures, respectable 
mediocrity was the rule, and commanding excellence 
the exception. Still, it was there, among the pictures 
and the statuary, that the great masses of visitors found 
their highest satisfactions, and the return for their fees 
of admission. 

To those who have spent many days in the London 
National Gallery, in the galleries of the Louvre, in the 
halls of Dresden, in the palaces of Florence, and among 
the exhaustless art-treasures of Rome, the exhibition at 
Philadelphia could have only a subordinate interest. 
The poverty and the contrast seemed great, and, to an 
extent, painful ; but to the majority of visitors, the ex- 



64 Every-Day Topics. 

hibition was the first of any magnitude they had ever 
seen. It was to them a superlative delight — a revelation 
of achievements, the possibility of which they had never 
conceived. The wonders of the Main Building, of Ma- 
chinery Hall, and of the minor collections, were all sub- 
ordinate to those of the finer arts. The pictures formed 
the central, dominant point of attraction every day, 
from the beginning to the end. 

Now, these facts mean a great deal with relation to 
the future of art in this country. They mean that there 
is an innate love of art — of the beautiful in picture and 
sculpture — in the average American, from which it only 
needs time and opportunity to reap grand harvests of 
achievement and appreciation. We can now perfectly 
understand Mr. Archer's statement, to which we have 
previously alluded in these columns, with regard to the 
effect upon English art and the English mind of the Lon- 
don Exhibition of 185 1. It will be remembered that he 
attributed the great progress of art in that country dur- 
ing the last twenty-five years to that exhibition. The 
people went to studying art at once, so that art-schools 
were multiplied throughout the realm almost a hundred- 
fold. It is owing to that exhibition that England has 
been able to show us so much that is satisfactory at 
Philadelphia. Like causes, under like conditions, pro- 
duce like results ; and we look forward upon the next 
quarter of a century to the only general movement in 
art that our young country has ever known. We are 
ready for it, and stimulus and direction have come just 
when we need it. Hitherto, our art has been desultory, 
patchy, and partial. The absence of life-schools has 
driven our artists all to landscape, or sent them abroad 
and kept them there. Figure-painting by artists who 
have always lived in America is almost unknown. For 
the growth of illustrated literature in this country, it has 



Art. 65 

been next to impossible to find competent figure artists 
to draw upon the block. So this is one of the good re- 
sults for which we confidently look — a general develop- 
ment of art throughout the country, and the establish- 
ment of art schools of real excellence in all the American 
cities. 

There must infallibly come, with the universal culti- 
vation of art and the nourishment of the art feeling, a 
change in our industries, or, rather, a very broad en- 
largement of them. We are now manufacturers of hats, 
shoes, cotton cloth, iron, woollens, and a limited 
amount of silks for service — of sewings more partic- 
ularly. We can build ships, too, with sufficient motive, 
and machinery of all sorts, from a Waltham watch to 
the largest steam-engine; but of beautiful things we 
make very few, and these mainly in imitation of those 
which we import. Now, there is nothing in our national 
economy so desirable as the diversification of our indus- 
try. We see what other nations have done in the exhi- 
bition of the Main Building, and by trying hard we could 
probably imitate the products which so arouse our ad- 
miration. That, precisely, is what we do not want to 
do. That would never help us, except temporarily and 
in a mean way. It is curious to see how the people 
themselves, by a sort of blind instinct, have plunged to 
the bottom of the secret. There must be a cultivation 
of art from the beginning — there must be education in 
the perception and delineation of forms and the combi- 
nation of colors, before we can hope to do any original 
work in the way of making our own beautiful things. 
Our foreign cousins would send' us new forms while we 
were imitating their old ones — new forms conceived in 
a fundamental knowledge of art to which we could lay 
no claim. 

So, at the very basis of all the beautiful industries that 



66 Every-Day Topics. 

are so desirable to us as a nation, there must be laid a 
popular knowledge of art. We must have drawing com- 
petently taught in our common schools, everywhere. 
We must have art schools for those who in the common 
schools have shown special gifts and adaptations for art. 
Thus, by beginning at the bottom, all those industries 
which involve the fine art element will naturally grow 
up among us, based upon our own designs. In truth, 
there is no other ground upon which these very desir- 
able industries can be established ; and we beg the 
American people to recognize the fact that the cultiva- 
tion of art is to result in something far beyond the pic- 
ture that hangs on the wall, and the statue that fills the 
niche — it is to result in the profitable employment of 
hundreds of thousands of men and women in producing 
articles of ornament which we now import. Universal 
art cultivation is the soil from which will naturally and 
inevitably spring a thousand interests and industries 
that will minister to American prosperity, comfort, lux- 
ury, and refinement. 

If any of our readers should ask us what we mean by 
this — what industries would be developed by the general 
cultivation of art — we have simply to refer him to the 
dinner-service from which he takes his food, after read- 
ing this article. There are ninety-nine chances in a 
hundred that it came from China or Europe ; and we 
have simply to say that in either case there is no gen- 
eral knowledge of art in this country sufficient to pro- 
duce the decorations upon it. If it is French, and ex- 
pensive, American art has no more power to produce it 
than it has to produce the Chinese. We do not know 
enough to make these decorations, and if we could suc- 
ceed in a clumsy imitation of them, we could design 
nothing new. This is an illustration simply. Our tables, 
our rooms, our wardrobes, abound in articles which we 



Art. 67 

ought to make ourselves, but which we never can make 
until, by thorough instruction and patient practice, a 
great multitude of American men and women have be- 
come artists. It is this which gives the highest practi- 
cal significance to the art exhibition at Philadelphia, 
and makes the public interest in it an era in the national 
life and development. To us it is the most hopeful and 
promising of all the possible results of the Great Exhibi- 
tion. 

Art Criticism. 

Art criticism, in this country, has reached about as 
low a level as it can find, without becoming execrable. 
It is so at war with itself, that it has ceased to have any 
authority ; and so capricious, and so apparently under 
the influence of unworthy motives, that it has become 
contemptible. We may instance the late exhibition of 
water-colors in this city, and the kind and variety of crit- 
icism it called forth, as an illustration of what we mean. 
It has been absolutely impossible for the public to get 
any adequate idea of this exhibition through the revela- 
tions and discussions of the public press. What one 
man has praised without stint, another has condemned 
without mercy. All sorts of theories and comments and 
considerations have been offered, and if the public mind 
is not in a muddle over the whole matter, it is not the 
fault of the men who have written about it. 

Now there are just two objects that furnish an apology 
for a man to publish his opinions on an art exhibition, 
viz., the information of the public, and the improvement 
of the artists. Of course, it is an impertinence for any 
man to assume the role of the art critic who does not 
understand what he is talking about, and who is not free 
enough from partisanships and hobbies to write with 
candor. The great end of criticism is popular and pro- 



68 Every-Day Topics. 

fessional improvement, and in order that this double end 
may be secured, there must be popular and professional 
confidence in the sources of the criticism. We believe 
it to be notorious that, among the painters of New York, 
there is not a particle of confidence in the critics who 
write upon art. They do not, in any instance, expect to 
be fairly and ably treated. They have no faith in the 
competency of the newspaper writers on art to teach 
them. They have no faith in their candor. When they 
put up a picture for exhibition, they regard the whole 
matter of newspaper notice as a chance in a lottery. 
They are thankful if somebody praises it, and if nobody 
abuses it, because that will help to sell it, but beyond 
that they have no interest. They do not in the slightest 
degree acknowledge the competency of these writers to 
teach them, and they have the utmost contempt for their 
general theories and their special judgments. Under 
these circumstances, one of the principal offices of crit- 
icism is rendered useless. 

The public has come to pretty much the same con- 
clusion as the painters. They have learned that these 
writers have no guiding principles, that they agree in 
nothing, and that each man writes from the stand-point 
of his own private tastes, or his own private prejudices 
and partisanships. They find the pictures of a certain 
man condemned as utter and irredeemable failures, and 
they go to see the failures, finding them the best pictures 
in the exhibition. They find the pictures of another man 
praised as profoundly worthy, and they go to see them, 
and find them unconscionable daubs that would disgrace 
the walls of any parlor in New York — really, for any 
pleasure -giving power that they possess, not worth the 
white paper they have spoiled. Moreover, what one 
critic praises another one condemns, and vice versa. 
Indeed, there are some men among these writers whose 



Art. 6g 

judgments have been so capricious, and whimsical, and 
unfair, and so notoriously fallacious, that their praise of 
a picture arouses suspicions against it and really damages 
its market value. 

Now criticism, to be valuable, must be based in prin- 
ciple. If there are any such things as sound principles 
of art, gentlemen, show them to us, and show us your 
judgments based upon them. Agree among yourselves. 
We, the people, don't care for your private tastes and 
notions. We care a great deal more about our own. 
We are not at all interested in yours. What we want 
of you is instruction in sound principles of art, which 
will enable us to form judgments and to understand the 
basis of yours. Your prejudices, and piques, and whims 
are not of the slightest value to anybody, and your pub- 
lication of them is a presumptuous and impertinent per- 
formance, growing more and more presumptuous and 
impertinent every year, while the people are growing 
rapidly more competent to judge of these matters for 
themselves. 

In the present jumble of art criticism in this country, 
consisting of great contrariety of sentiment and opinion, 
much injustice is necessarily done to artists and schools 
of artists ; and injustice, meted out in the unsparing 
doses that are often indulged in, is a poison that greatly 
injures all who receive it. It takes immense pluck and 
strong individuality to stand up against it. There are 
some painters who possess these qualities, but not many, 
so that the consciousness of unjust treatment at the 
hands of public criticism is a positive damage to them 
and their art. There have been cruelties and discour- 
tesies indulged in which only a raw-hide could properly 
punish, and for which there was no valid excuse and 
whose only influence was bad. 

We are growing in this country in all that relates to 



70 Every-Day Topics. 

art, except in this matter of art criticism. People are 
becoming educated in art, and a new spirit seems to 
have taken possession of the American people. Let us 
hope that those who undertake to guide the public judg- 
ment may meet the new requirements of the day by a 
most decided improvement among themselves, so that 
we may have something more valuable from them than 
the airing of pet notions and a public show of their sym- 
pathies and antipathies. 

Greatness in Art. 
It is interesting to notice what passes for greatness in 
art with the average man, not to say the average critic. 
If we were to ask him to name the half dozen greatest 
actors this country possesses, he would not omit from 
his enumeration certain names that by no just rule of 
judgment can lay claim to greatness. We allude to 
those actors who have become notorious, or famous, or 
exceedingly admired, for their power to represent a sin- 
gle character. Now, this power to represent a single 
character, and only a single character, superlatively well, 
is a mark of littleness and not of greatness. The man 
who can only make his mark in a single part, shows that 
he is not an actor — shows that the part is purposely or 
accidentally shaped to him, and that it is a harmonious 
outcome of his individuality. He has simply to act him- 
self to act his part well, and that is not acting at all. 
As a rule, the men who make the most money in the his- 
trionic art, and pass for the greatest actors with the peo- 
ple, are in no true sense of the word actors at all. The 
great actor is the man who can play every part, and any 
part — who can successfully go out of himself into the 
impersonation of a wide range of characters. Nature, 
of course, places limitations upon every man, so that 
no man can be equally great in all parts ; but he cer- 



Art. yi 

tainly is the greatest actor who can be great in the largest 
number of parts. There are several men and women 
upon the contemporary stage, enjoying its highest honors 
and emoluments, who have hardly a valid claim to the 
name of actors. The " starring system " naturally pro- 
duces just such artists as these, and we suppose it always 
will. 

Twenty years ago the American passing through Flor- 
ence did not consider a visit to that city complete, un- 
less he had had an interview with " the great American 
sculptor," Hiram Powers ; but it seems that Mr. Powers* 
immortality is to be a very mild and modest one. He 
has passed away, leaving a delightful personal memory ; 
but it somehow happens that what he has left behind 
him in imperishable stone does not, in the light of these 
later days, confirm the early opinions of his greatness. 
He has never made a group. He spent his life on ideal 
heads, single ideal forms, and portrait busts. His pupil, 
Conolly, was making groups within five years of the be- 
ginning of his study — could not be restrained from 
making groups. Powers could not have failed to see 
that his pupil was greater than himself — more dramatic, 
more inventive, more constructive — every way broader 
in his power. The elements of true greatness were in 
the younger man, and were not in the older man. 

What we say of these two men will serve to illustrate 
the truths we would like to present concerning greatness 
in all plastic and pictorial art. Many of our painters 
who have great reputations are petty men. They know 
something of a specialty, can do something creditable 
in it, and can do absolutely nothing out of it. They 
have no universality of knowledge or of skill. They can 
do just one thing, and they continue to do that one thing 
so long that they take on a mannerism of subject and of 
treatment, so well learned by the public, at last, that 



72 Every-Day Topics. 

their pictures are their autographs. Unless America 
can get out of this rut in some way, she cannot make 
great progress. Our " great painters" are our little 
painters — are the men who plod along in a narrow path, 
seeing nothing and attempting nothing in the wide field 
that opens on all sides of them. They learn to do one 
thing well, and they emphasize that one thing so firmly, 
and dogmatize upon it so loudly, that they win credit 
to themselves for greatness, when their work is the cer- 
tificate of their littleness and narrowness. 

It is in painting and sculpture as it is in all other fields 
of life and effort — the wider the knowledge and the 
wider the practice, the better the skill in all the special- 
ties which the knowledge and practice embrace. Titian 
was one of the greatest portrait painters that ever lived, 
and he was a much better portrait painter than he would 
otherwise have been for painting such works as " The 
Assumption of the Virgin." The great embraces the 
little. The universal covers all details. Our painters 
stop in the details, and seem to be content with what 
they get or suggest, without attempting invention and 
composition. We wish it could be understood that 
there is no such thing as greatness in art without inven- 
tion and composition. There are three great names 
that come down to us, accompanied each by a mighty 
charm — the names of Michael Angelo, Raphael, and 
Leonardo da Vinci — and while that of Raphael is the 
best beloved, the first and the last named of the trio 
constantly assert themselves as the greatest. They were 
simply inventors and composers of higher merit and a 
wider range of powers than Raphael. 

We know that we live in a day not particularly favor- 
able to the development of great art. Men must paint 
to sell, and, in order to sell, men must paint for their 
market. Still, we believe that there is a market for all 



Art. 73 

that our artists can produce, that is truly great. This 
magazine is buying invention and good composition con- 
stantly, and we do not hesitate to say that the two vol- 
umes which contain in any year the issues of Scribner's 
Monthly, can show more of both than any single exhi- 
bition of our National Academy has been able to show 
since the magazine began its existence. The pettiness 
of our art is its curse, and we emphasize this pettiness 
and call it greatness. What we want is more invention 
— bringing together into dramatic relation wider ranges 
and more varied masses of material. We may get 
cleverness this side of invention and composition, but 
greatness, never. 

This principle runs through all art. Why is it that 
American poetry has asserted so small a place in the 
great world of literature ? It is simply because it is 
irredeemably petty. The cutting of cameos may be 
done by men who are capable of great work, but it is not 
great work in itself, and no man can establish a claim 
to greatness upon it. The writing little poems — jobs of 
an evening, or happy half hours of leisure — can make 
no man a great poet. Unless a man use this kind of 
work as study for great inventions and compositions, and 
actually go on and compass these supreme efforts of the 
poetic art, he is but a small experimenter. He may enjoy 
a little notoriety, but he can win no permanent place 
in art. Shakspere, and Milton, and Dante, and Goethe 
— the kings of song — were creators. They wrote brief 
poems of great beauty, but their reputation for great- 
ness rests entirely on their broad poetic inventions, 
which embraced a great variety of elements. Tenny- 
son, Browning, and Swinburne, of the Englishmen now 
writing, stand above the great mass of English verse- 
writers, or verse-writers in the English language, be- 
cause they are more than clever writers of brief poems. 
4 



74 Every-Day Topics. 

They are inventors, composers, creators. They have 
called into being and endowed with vitality great poetic 
organisms. We have just looked over a new volume of 
American verses, which presents hardly a poem to the 
page. There is not the first sign of invention in it from 
beginning to end, yet the American press is discussing 
the place which its author occupies and is to occupy 
in American letters, as if it really were an important 
matter ! 

One of our Japanese visitors at the Centennial, whom 
we regarded as a sort of interesting heathen, remarked 
patronizingly that " we must all remember that America 
is very young. " He was right. 

Pettiness in Art. 
In an article published some months since in this de- 
partment, entitled " Greatness in Art," we gave utter- 
ance to some thoughts which we would like to emphasize 
here. A man travelling in Europe discovers at once a 
different style of art from that produced here— a larger 
and more dignified style. The pictures which he sees 
there, in public galleries and in the multitudinous Cath- 
olic churches, are such as are never produced here. 
There is no outlet here for the largest thoughts and 
highest inspirations of the artist's mind and hand. 
Men must paint for a market. If there are no pub- 
lic galleries to paint for, and no churches demand 
their work, then they must paint for the walls of the 
homes of the land. This necessarily restricts their 
paintings in the matter of dimensions ; so everybody 
paints small pictures. A small picture is a restriction 
in the matter of subjects. A dignified historical picture 
must have large figures to be impressive ; and however 
serious and ambitious a painter may be, he is loth to 
place a work that, by its nature, demands a large can- 



Art. 75 

vas and broad handling, on a small canvas that compels 
pettiness of detail and effects. 

The barrel that an American artist may have in his 
brain cannot be sold to anybody. The largest thing 
that anybody buys is a gallon, and the really marketable 
things are quarts and pints. An artist may hold in his 
imagination a palace for kings and queens and the nobil- 
ity of the earth, but he can only sell a play-house for 
children, and he is obliged to sell to get food and shelter 
for himself and his dependents. So American art is 
made up of the quarts and pints of the artistic capacity 
of its producers and the toy-houses which should be pal- 
aces and broad domains. The tendency of these facts 
is degrading and depressing to the last degree. They 
have already dwarfed American art and circumscribed 
its development. When it gets to this — that every artist 
who undertakes a great thing is looked upon as a profli- 
gate or a fool, because there is no market for a great 
thing — matters can hardly be worse. The necessarily 
constant consideration of marketableness in pictures is 
very degrading, and tends inevitably to unfit the artist 
for the best work. Crowded into the smallest spaces, 
cut off from all great ambitions, men cease to think 
largely, grow petty in their subjects, reach out into strik- 
ing mannerisms for the sake of effects that cannot be 
produced in a natural way, and lavish on technique the 
power and pains that should go into great designs and a 
free and full individual expression. 

The recent exhibition of water-colors in this city 
showed how far into pettiness the artists in that line of 
work have gone. There was much that was bright and 
pretty and attractive, but how irredeemably petty it all 
was ! It may be said that nothing can be expected of 
water-colors beyond the representation of petty things, 
but we remember three large water-color exhibitions in 



y6 Every-Day Topics. 

London, all open at the same time, where there were 
pictures so large and important and fine, that thousands 
of dollars were demanded for them and commanded by 
them. The painters attempted and accomplished great 
things. They showed, at least, that the desire and the 
motive to do great things were not absolutely extin- 
guished within them. There were up-reachings toward 
high ideals. Here, we seem to be on a dead level of 
conception and aim, and the man cleverest with his hand 
leads. The catalogue will rehearse the topics — too triv- 
ial to engage any poet's attention, too petty to inspire 
any man's respect. The worst of this is that this collec- 
tion of pettiness was sold almost to the last picture. 
We are glad to see the purses of the artists filled ; but 
the success of this unprecedented sale must be to en- 
courage them in a path of degeneration and demoraliza- 
tion. 

It pays to be petty. It is a thousand pities that there 
is no outlet in America for the best and highest that her 
artists can do. Wandering through the beautiful miles of 
pictures in Rome, in Florence, in Munich, in Paris, in 
Versailles, in London — gazing upon the walls of splendid 
churches scattered all over Europe — we can see where 
the inspirations have come from that have made that art 
supreme. The market for great work was open, and the 
best and greatest that the best and greatest artist could do 
was sure of a place and a price. When America estab- 
lishes galleries of pictures, and holds the funds to pay for 
all that is great and worthy, the great and worthy pictures 
will undoubtedly be painted. Meantime, the artists of the 
country must fight the influences which depress and de- 
moralize them as best they can. They can do more and 
better than they are doing we are sure. We sincerely hope 
that next year we shall have, in all our exhibitions, an ad- 
vance in the subjects treated, so that pettiness in size of 



Art. 77 

pictures may be somewhat atoned for by dignity and 
interest of topic, and a larger and more natural style of 
treatment. The nation is not only becoming prosper- 
ous, but is constantly progressing in the knowledge of 
art, so that we believe all good artists will find it for 
their pecuniary advantage to go higher in their work — 
higher in excellence and higher in price. If they cannot 
sell large pictures, they can surely sell those of graver 
import and more elaborate execution. 

Art as a Steady Diet. 

The spread of art and art ideas in this country has 
been accepted as a sort of new gospel. A new and ad- 
vanced religion could hardly be welcomed more cor- 
dially or hopefully. A fresh significance has been given 
to life, and in everything — in architecture, in painting, 
in sculpture, in pottery, in home decoration, in em- 
broidery, and in all the multitudinous ways in which the 
aesthetic in men and women (especially in women) ex- 
presses itself — there has been a great revival, or an 
absolutely new birth. Partly, this is the result of the 
Centennial Exhibition, and partly it is the result of a 
contagion that seems to swim in the universal air. The 
whole world is growing artistic. The nations are stim- 
ulating one another, and exchanging ideas. Our own 
country, though it has been the last to awaken out of 
sleep, bids fair to run its new enthusiasm into a craze. 

We were about to write that this new enthusiasm had 
spared neither age nor sex. It has spared no age among 
women ; but where men have felt the new impetus in a 
considerable degree, women have felt it in a supreme 
degree. Distinct from the great mass, there are two 
classes of women who have seized upon the new ideas 
and new influences to help them out of trouble, viz., 
those who have nothing to do because they have no 



78 Every-Day Topics. 

physical wants to provide for, and those who, since the 
war and the hard times, have been obliged in some way 
to provide for themselves. The multitudes who are now 
"decorating" porcelain, learning "the Kensington 
stitch " in embroidery, painting on satin, illuminating 
panels, designing and putting together curtains, making 
lace, drawing from the antique, sketching, daubing, etc., 
etc., are surprising. Some will undoubtedly find agree- 
able employment in this, and kill their superfluous time 
in a graceful way. Some who need it will find remu- 
nerative employment in it, and all will get a kind of 
culture by it that America has sadly needed. In the 
future, American homes will be better individualized 
than they have been. The work of decoration every- 
where will be modified. We shall have better public 
and domestic architecture. The public stock of art 
ideas will be so greatly enlarged that the country will be 
comparatively safe from the outrages upon good taste 
that confront the eye in both city and country. People 
will at least know enough to see their own ignorance, 
and to be careful about expressing it. 

Now, while we rejoice in this development, and in all 
the pleasure and comfort and culture it brings, we warn 
all against expecting too much from it. Art is a very 
thin diet for any human soul. There is no new gospel 
in it. There is no religion in it, and there is nothing in 
it to take the place of religion. It has to do with but few 
of the great verities and vitalities that most concern 
mankind. Form, configuration, color, construction, all 
the dainty secrets and devices of presentment, inven- 
tions of phrase and tint to excite the imagination, organic 
proportion, internal harmony and external beauty — 
these constitute art, as a vehicle. Art is simply a 
carrier of divine things. It is only the servant of su- 
preme values. Art is no leader and no king ; and the 



Art. 79 

soul that undertakes to live by being the servant of this 
servant, will certainly win inadequate wages and die of 
starvation. For art, it should be remembered, adds 
nothing to morality, nothing to religion, nothing to 
science, nothing to knowledge except a knowledge of 
itself, nothing to social or political wisdom, theoreti- 
cally or practically. It may have a vehicular office 
with regard to all these ; but the vital values are in 
them, and not at all in it. 

It is not at all necessary to go to the old and familiar 
fields of Roman and Grecian civilization for illustrations 
of the powerlessness of art to conserve and to develop a 
national life. Rome and Athens went to sleep with all 
the marvels of their art around them, and the eye of To- 
day, prepared for vision by the survey of other fields 
than those of art, greets those marvels with the first ap- 
preciation they have had through long centuries. We 
have only to turn to the living China and Japan to see 
how little art can do toward civilization, and how insig- 
nificant an element it is in civilization. Japan, in many 
matters of art, can teach the world, and the same may 
be said of China. We will take the familiar matter of 
decorating porcelain. There is no decoration of por- 
celain in Europe that can compare for a moment with 
the best of that executed in China and Japan. English 
decoration is crude and coarse, and French is feeble and 
conventional, compared with that. Sevres porcelain 
has been shamed into poverty and commonplaceness by 
the rich and altogether original . combinations of color 
that illustrate the best Oriental art. The Japanese, es- 
pecially, seem to have learned everything there is to be 
known about color, so far as it relates to the familiar 
varieties of decoration, and the English attempts to imi- 
tate their work are equally sad and laughable. We 
mean simply to assert that, in every department of art 



80 Every-Day Topics. 

to which they have specially turned their attention, they 
have surpassed the civilized world. 

And what does all this prove ? What but that art 
may be born of a people very imperfectly civilized ? 
What but that art is a very thin and innutritious diet 
for any person or any people to live upon ? China and 
Japan are trying to learn everything else of us. They 
knew little or nothing of science ; they had no ma- 
chinery ; their literature was childish ; they were bound 
up in their own self-conceit and their own exclusive 
policy, and the word progress was an unknown word in 
both those vast realms, until daylight shone in upon 
them from Europe and America. Now they are send- 
ing their boys to us to learn what they find will be vastly 
for their advantage to know. 

We trust that our people, in the new interest that has 
been awakened in all matters relating to art, will be very 
moderate in their expectations of results. Art is an ex- 
cellent servant, and a very poor master. When a man 
is supremely absorbed in it — when he has no thought 
for anything else — he is degraded by it. It is simply 
not the supreme thing, and cannot be treated as such 
without damage. It is most likely that, as China and 
Japan get more knowledge and abetter hold of the prac- 
tically productive arts, and of new social and political 
ideas, the arts that now distinguish them will decay. 
The new interest in art here is all right, and very much 
to be encouraged ; only it does not come anywhere near 
being the principal thing, and cannot be treated as such, 
for any length of time, by any man or woman, without 
incurring mental and spiritual poverty. 



LITERATURE. 

The Legitimate Novel. 

IT is a curious fact that while the novel, as a form of 
literary art, is becoming every year more universal, it 
is hardening into a conventional form. What is a novel 
in its broadest definition ? It is an invented history of 
human lives, brought into relations with each other, 
whose first office is to amuse. Some of these inventions 
have no end nor aim but amusement, and those which 
have other aims rely upon amusement for effecting 
them. The novelist who has a lesson to teach, or a re- 
form to forward, or a truth or principle to illustrate, does 
not hope to do it through his work, unless he can secure 
its reading through its power to amuse. Mr. Dallas, in 
his " Gay Science," says that the first business of all art 
is to please, which, after all, is only our doctrine in other 
words. Any work of literary art, whether novel or poem, 
has no apology for existence, if it do not have the power 
to convey pleasure of some kind. 

Now, the fact that the novel has been seized upon the 
world over, for a great number of offices, shows how 
naturally it is adapted to a wide range of aims and ends 
in its construction. Political, moral, social, and reli- 
gious topics can be treated through the medium of in- 
vented stories, and they have been treated in this way 
with the most gratifying success. We have the politi- 
cal, the moral, and the religious novel, and we have also 
4* 



82 Every-Day Topics. 

the society novel, and it is only at a comparatively re- 
cent date that a set of critics have appeared who are in- 
clined to rule out of the category of legitimacy every- 
thing but the society novel. Even this must be a certain 
kind of society novel in order to meet their approval. 
It must always deal with the passion of love as its ruling 
motive, and consist of the interplay of the relations be- 
tween men and women. It must have absolutely no 
mission but that of amusement. In performing this 
mission it must be true to certain ideas of art that re- 
late to the delineation of character, the development of 
plot, and the arrangement of dramatic situations and cli- 
maxes. If the rules are all complied with — if the love is 
properly made, and the characters are properly handled, 
and the novel is interesting — the book is legitimate. 
If, however, the book is made to carry a burden — if it 
illustrates — no matter how powerfully — an important 
truth or principle in politics, economy, morals, or reli- 
gion, its legitimacy is vitiated, or positively forfeited. v 

Now, it is to protest against this ruling that we write 
this article. The dilettanti assuming authority in this 
matter should have no weight among earnest men and 
women, because they are not earnest themselves. They 
have no moral, religious, social, or political purpose, and 
they are offended when they meet it in the writings of 
others. It is beyond their comprehension that a man 
should have any purpose in writing beyond the glorifica- 
tion of himself through his power to interest and amuse 
others. If he undertakes anything beyond this, then 
they pronounce him no true artist, and place his book 
outside of all consideration as a work of art. In the 
overwhelming popularity of such works as " Uncle Tom's 
Cabin" and " Nicholas Nickleby," written with a hu- 
mane or Christian purpose, these fellows cannot make 
their voices heard, but Mrs. Stowe has only to retire and 



Literature. 83 

Dickens to die, to bring them out of their holes in pro- 
test against all that does not accord with their petty- 
notions of novel-writing. 

We claim for the novel the very broadest field. It 
may illustrate history, like the novels of Walter Scott, 
or philosophy, like those of George Eliot, or religion, 
like those of George MacDonald, or domestic and poli- 
tical economy, like those of the late Mrs. Sedgwick, or 
it may represent the weak or the ludicrous side of human 
nature and human society, like many of those of Dickens 
and Thackeray, or it may present the lighter social 
topics and types, like those of James and Howells, or it 
may revel in the ingenuities of intricate plots, like those 
of Collins and Reade — every novel and every sort of 
novel is legitimate if it be well written. It may rely upon 
plot for its interest, or upon the delineation of character, 
or upon its wit or its philosophy, or upon its dramatic 
situations, and it may carry any burden which its writer 
may choose to place upon its shoulders, and it shall 
never forfeit its claim to legitimacy with us. 

The man who denies to art any kind of sendee to 
humanity which it can perform is either a fool or a 
trifler. Things have come to a sad pass when any form 
of art is to be set aside because a board of self-consti- 
tuted arbiters cannot produce it, or do not sympathize 
with its purpose. There is more freshness and interest 
in "The Grandissimes " of Mr. Cable, with its reproduc- 
tion of the old Creole life of New Orleans, and its revival 
of early Louisiana history, than in all the novels these 
dilettanti have written in the last ten years. It is unmis- 
takable that the tendency of modern criticism upon 
novels has been to make them petty and trifling to a 
nauseating degree. It is a lamentable consideration 
that the swing of a petticoat, or the turn of an ankle, or 
the vapid utterance of a dandy, or even the delineation 



84 Every-Day Topics. 

of a harlot and a harlot's disgusting life, shall be counted 
quite legitimate material for a novel, when the great 
questions which concern the life and prosperity of the 
soul and the state are held in dishonor, and forbidden 
to the novelist as material of art. 

It is all a part and parcel of the heresy that art is a 
master and not a minister — an end and not a means. 
The men who maintain it have a personal interest in 
maintaining it. Any art or' form of art, that does not 
end in itself or in themselves is one of which they are 
consciously incapable, or one with which they cannot 
sympathize. So they cpmfort themselves by calling it 
illegitimate ; and as they are either in a majority or in 
high or fashionable places, the public are misled by 
them, so far as the public think at all on the subject. It 
is a doctrine of literary pretenders and practical triflers, 
and the public may properly be warned to give it no heed 
whatever. 

Dandyism. 

Carlyle says that " a dandy is a clothes-wearing man 
— a man whose trade, office, and existence consists in the 
wearing of clothes." Then he adds, in his grim irony : 
"Nay, if you grant what seems to be admissible, that 
the dandy had a thinking principle in him, and some 
notion of time and space, is there not in the life-devoted- 
ness to cloth, in this so willing sacrifice of the immortal 
to the perishable, something (though in reverse order) 
of that blending and identification of eternity with time, 
which .... constitutes the prophetic character." 

After Carlyle has handled the dandy, there is not, of 
course, much left for other people to do. Still, we can 
reflect a little more particularly on the style of mind 
which produces or accompanies dandyism, and get our 
lesson out of the process. Why supreme devotion to 



Literature* 85 

dress, on the part of a man, should be so contemptible, 
and, on the part of a woman, so comparatively venial, we 
have never been able to determine, but there is no doubt 
that we are quite ready to forgive in woman a weakness 
which we despise in man. To see a man so absorbed in 
the decoration of his own person, and in the develop- 
ment of his own graces that all other objects in life are 
held subordinate to this one small and selfish passion or 
pursuit, is no less disgusting than surprising. To am- 
plify Carlyle's definition of a dandy a little, we may say 
that he is a man whose soul is supremely devoted to the 
outside of things, particularly the outside of himself, 
and who prides himself not at all on what he is, but on 
what he seems, and not at all on seeming sensible or 
learned, but on seeming beautiful, in a way that he re- 
gards as stylish. A male human being who cares 
supremely about the quality of the woollen, silk, linen, 
felt and leather that encase his body and the place where 
his brains should be, forgetting the soul within him and 
the great world without him, with the mysterious future 
that lies before him, would seem to deserve the mockery 
of all mankind, as well as of Carl vie. 

Still, the dandy in dress is not a very important topic 
to engage the attention of a man who is sensible enough 
to read a magazine, and we should not have said a word 
about him if we did not detect his disposition in other 
things besides dress. AVe have what may legitimately 
be denominated dandyism in literature. Literature is 
often presented as the outcome of as true dandyism as 
is ever observed in dress. • There are many writers, 
we fear, who care more about their manner of saying 
a thing than about the thing they have to say. All these 
devotees to style, all those coiners of fine phrases who 
tax their ingenuity to make their mode of saying a 
thing more remarkable than the thing said — men who 



86 Every-Day Topics. 

play with words for the sake of the words, and who seek 
admiration for their cleverness in handling the medium 
of thought itself, and men also who perform literary- 
gymnastics in order to attract attention — all these are 
literary dandies. The great verities and vitalities of 
thought and life are never supreme with these men. 
They would a thousand times rather fail in a thought 
than trip in the rounding of a sentence and the fall of a 
period. Of course, all this petting of their own style, and 
this supreme study of ways with words, is in itself so self- 
ish a matter that their work is vitiated, and even the 
semblance of earnestness is lost. Dandies in literature 
never accomplish anything for anybody except them- 
selves. Verily they have their reward, for they have 
their admirers, though they are among those no more 
in earnest than themselves. 

We have had in America one eminent literary dandy. 
He lived at a time when it was very easy for a man of 
literary gifts to make a reputation — easy to attract the 
attention of the people ; and the temptation to toy with 
the popular heart was too great for him to resist, and so 
he who could have taught and inspired his countrymen 
was content to play with his pen, and seek for their ap- 
plause. He had his reward. He was as notorious as he 
sought to be. People read his clever verses and clapped 
their hands, but those verses did not voice any man's or 
woman's aspirations, or soothe any man's or woman's 
sorrows. They helped nobody. They were not the 
earnest outpourings of a nature consecrated either to 
God or song, and the response that they met in the pub- 
lic heart was not one of grateful appropriation, though 
that heart was not slow to offer the incense of its admira- 
tion to the clever and graceful, even if supremely selfish, 
artist. It is hardly necessary to add that this superb 
literary dandy has found no one who cared enough 



Literature. 87 

for him to write his life ; and it takes a pretty poor sort 
of literary man nowadays to escape a biography. We 
would not speak of this man were we not conscious that 
we have — now living and writing — others who are like 
him in spirit and in aim — men who are supremely anx- 
ious to get great credit for their way of doing things, and 
who are interested mainly in the externals of literature — 
men who, moved by personal vanity, are seeking rather 
to attract attention to themselves than to impress their 
thoughts, as elevating and purifying forces, upon their 
generation. 

Dandyism does not stop either with dress or literature, 
but invades all art. Never, perhaps, in the history of 
painting, has there been so much dandyism in art as at 
the present day. Never, it seems to us, were painters 
so much devoted to painting the outside of things as 
they are now. We are dazzled everywhere with tricks of 
color, fantastic dress, subjects chosen only with refer- 
ence to their adaptation to the revelation of the special 
clevernesses of those who treat them. It seems as if 
every painter who had managed to achieve some remark- 
able trick of handling, were making it the business of his 
life to play that trick, and to have nothing to do with any 
topic which will not furnish him the occasion for its use. 
Our young men, in a great number of instances, are run- 
ning after these trick-masters, learning nothing of art in 
its deeper meanings, but supremely busy with the out- 
side of things, and very trivial things at that. In this 
devotion to the tricks of art, all earnestness and worthi- 
ness of purpose die, and art becomes simply a large and 
useless field of dandyism. 

We have plenty of dandyism in the pulpit. We do 
not allude to the dandyism of clerical regalia, although 
there is a disgusting amount of that ; but the devotion to 
externals as they relate to manner of writing, and man- 



88 



Every-Day Topics. 



ner of speech, and manner of social intercourse. The 
preacher who is in dead earnest, and has nothing to ex- 
hibit but the truth he preaches, is not a man of formali- 
ties. The clerical dandy impresses one with himself and 
not with his Master. He shows of! himself. He studies 
his poses and his intonations as if he were in very deed 
an actor. We have stylists in the pulpit, we have actors 
in the pulpit, who challenge attention and intend to 
challenge attention by their manner, and it is not at all 
a manner of humble earnestness. Preachers are human, 
and they, like the rest of us, should pray to be de- 
livered from the sin of dandyism. 

The Prices of Books. 
One of the greatest anomalies of commerce is pre- 
sented by the considerations which govern the prices 
of books. If we step into a retail book store, and in- 
quire the price of a book of, say, five hundred pages duo- 
decimo, we shall learn that it is about two dollars. On 
looking into it, we shall learn that it is a crude novel — the 
product of a young girl's brains, and of very little con- 
cern to any but girls of the age of the writer. The next 
book we take up shall be one of the same size, by the 
best novelist of his language, and the price is also two 
dollars. We pass along a little further, and pick up 
another book, of the same cost in paper and mechanical 
production, but this time it is a philosophical work. The 
author is eminent, and this is the latest declaration of a 
most fertile mind — the grand result of all his thinking — 
the best summary of all his wisdom. The price of it is 
two dollars. The next is a poem. It took the author 
years to write it. His art is at its best, and he does not 
expect to surpass it. He gives to the world, in this 
poem, the highest it is in him to conceive. His very 
heart's blood has been coined into its phrases and its 



Literature. 89 

fancies-— price two dollars. The next book examined is 
a collection of the flabby jokes of some literary mounte- 
bank, and, on inquiring the price, we find that it costs 
about the same to print it that it did to print the others, 
and can be had for two dollars. 

Our natural conclusion is, that the quality of the ma- 
terial put into a book has nothing whatever to do with 
the price of it. The work of a poor brain sells for just 
as much, if it sells at all, as the work of a good brain. 
Even when we find an extra price put upon a book that 
, appeals to a limited class, we learn that the fact has no 
reference to the quality of the work, or to its cost to the 
man who wrote it. The extra price is put on simply to 
save the publisher from loss. The printer and paper- 
maker must be paid. The author is not taken into ac- 
count. 

As the quality of a painter's work grows finer and 
better, his pictures command increasing prices. The 
master in sculpture commands the market. He gets 
such prices as he will. Quality is an element of price 
in everything salable that we know of, except books. 
The prices of these are raised or depreciated only by the 
printer, the paper-maker, and the binder. Quality of the 
mechanical parts of the product is considered only by the 
publisher. The quality of the brain that invented and 
elaborated the book, the quality of the life that has gone 
into it, the quality of the art which has given it form — 
this sort of quality is not taken into consideration at all. 

Authorship, though more prosperous and independent 
than it was formerly, has not yet received its proper posi- 
tion in the world. It was a pauper for centuries, and still, 
among a large number of book publishers and book 
buyers, the author is regarded as a man whose property 
in a book is an intangible and very unimportant matter. 
The author has nothing whatever to say about the price 



9Q 



Every-Day Topics. 



of his book. He takes what the publisher, who is in 
direct competition with pirates, is willing or able to give 
him. 

Now printing, paper, and binding involve processes 
of manufacture, the prices of which vary but little from 
year to year. They are easily calculable, and a pub- 
lisher knows within three or four cents a copy just how 
much a book will cost him delivered at his counter. He 
receives his books like so many bales of cotton goods, 
or cases of shoes. Of the life, the education, the genius, 
the culture, the exhausting toil, the precious time, the 
hope, that went to the production of the manuscript from 
which the books were printed, he takes little account. A 
certain percentage upon the retail sales goes to the au- 
thor, and the author takes just what the publisher says 
he can afford to give him. 

Well, the golden age of authorship is coming, some 
time, and when it comes, the amount of an author's 
royalty will be printed on the title-page of his book. He 
can ask the public to pay him for royalty what he will, 
and if the public will not pay him his price, then — the 
book being produced and sold by the publisher at regu- 
lar rates — the author, and not the publisher, will be com- 
pelled to reduce the price, by reducing the royalty. 
Printing and selling books form a very simple business, 
that men may pursue under the same rules that govern 
every other business ; but in no way can an author get 
justice until he has a voice in determining the price of 
his books, and the public know exactly what they are 
paying him. At present he has no direct relation with 
the public. No discriminations are made, either for or 
against him. He stands behind the publisher, and the 
public do not see him at all. We see no reason why 
there should not appear on the title-page of every book 
the price and the amount of the author's royalty — show- 



Literature. 91 

ing exactly who is responsible for the price of the book, 
particularly if it be large. We do not think the plan 
would result in the increase of the cost of books to the 
public, except in instances where it ought to be in- 
creased. This, or something equivalent to this, will 
come when we get the international copyright. It may 
take the form that it does in England, where a pub- 
lisher buys a manuscript outright, and sells his volumes 
at a price based mainly on the cost of it. In some way 
the quality of literary work must be recognized in the 
price of a book; in some way a literary man's well- 
earned reputation must be taken into account in the 
sale of his productions, or authorship must suffer a con- 
stant and most discouraging wrong. We shall have the 
matter all adjusted, by and by. 

The Literary Class. 
In the great world of common and uncommon men 
and women who are outside of the pale of literary cul- 
ture, there exist certain prejudices against the literary 
class, which are little recognized and little talked about, 
but which are positive and pernicious. There is a feel- 
ing that this class is conceited, supercilious, selfish, and, 
to a very great extent, useless. There is a feeling that 
it is exclusive ; that it arrogates to itself the possession 
of tastes and powers above the rest of the world, upon 
which it looks down with contemptuous superiority. 
There is, undoubtedly, connected with this prejudice a 
dim conviction that the literary class is really superior 
to the rest of the world in its requirements, its tastes, 
and its sources of pleasure ; that culture is better than 
stocks and bonds ; that literary life occupies a higher 
plane than commercial, manufacturing, and agricul- 
tural life, and that it holds a wealth which money cannot 
buy, and which ordinary values can in no way measure. 



92 Every-Day Topics. 

Much of the unspoken protest that rises against the as- 
sumptions of the literary class, and against the arro- 
gance which it is supposed to possess, undoubtedly 
comes from a feeling of inferiority and impotence — of 
conscious inability to rise into its atmosphere, and to 
appropriate its wealth and its satisfactions. 

Having said this, it may also be said that the literary 
class is very largely to blame for this state of things. It 
has almost uniformly failed to recognize its relations and 
its duties to the world at large. It has been bound up 
in itself. It has read for itself, thought for itself, written 
for itself. It has had respect mainly to its own critical 
judgments. It has been a kind of close corporation— a 
mutual admiration society. It has looked for its inspira- 
tions mainly within its own circle. It has, in ten thou- 
sand ways, nourished the idea that it is not interested 
in the outside world ; that it does not care for the out- 
side world and its opinions ; that it owes no duty to it, 
and has no message for it. Its criticisms and judgments, 
in their motive and method, are often of the most frivo- 
lous character. An author is not judged according to 
what he has done for the world, but for what he 
has done for himself, and for what they are pleased 
to denominate " literature." To certain, or most un- 
certain, men of art, or canons of art, or notions of art, 
it holds itself in allegiance, ignoring the uses of art 
altogether. It has its end in itself. It is a cat that 
plays with and swallows its own tail. 

Now, it seems to us that if the literary class has any 
apology for existence, it must come from its uses to the 
world. It entertains a certain contempt for the world, 
which does not appreciate and will not take its wares, 
forgetting that it has not endeavored, in any way, to serve 
the world, by the adaptation of its wares to the world's 
use. Endeavoring to be true to itself, bowing in devo- 



Literature. 93 

tion and loyalty to its own opinions and notions, it utters 
its word, and then, because the great outside world will 
not hear it, complains, and finds its revenge in holding 
the popular judgment in contempt. It gives the world 
what it cannot appreciate, what it cannot appropriate ; 
what, in its condition, it does not need ; what it turns 
its back upon,— and finds its consolation in inside praise, 
and a reputation for good work among those who do not 
need it. 

In the best book we have, there are certain rules of 
life laid down, that are just as good for the literary as for 
the moral and religious world. The Son of Man came 
not to be ministered unto, but to minister. He that 
would be great must be a servant. If any man has 
special gifts, and achieves special culture of those gifts, 
his greatness is brought, by irreversible law and the 
divine policy, into immediate relation with the want of 
the world. He is to be a servant, and thus to prove his 
title to lordship. His true glory is only to be found in 
ministering. If he do not minister, he has no right to 
honor. If he will not minister, he holds his gift un- 
worthily, and has no more reason to expect the honor 
of the world for what he does, than he would if he did 
nothing. The military and administrative gifts of 
Washington were, undoubtedly, well known and honored 
among the military and political classes, but their sig- 
nificance and glory were only brought out in service. 
He is honored and revered, not because he served his 
class, but because he served his country. Those emi- 
nent gifts of his had no meaning save as they were re- 
lated to the wants of his time ; and their glory is that 
they served those wants. The glory of Watt, and 
Fulton, and Stevenson, and Morse, and Howe, is, not 
that they were ingenious men, but that they placed their 
ingenuity in the service of the world. The honor we 



94 



Every-Day Topics. 



give to Howard and Florence Nightingale is not given 
to their sympathetic hearts, but to their helpful hands. 

Why should the literary class, of all the gifted men 
and women of the world, alone hold its gifts in service 
of itself? Why should it refuse to come down into the 
service of life ? There is an audience waiting for every 
literary man and woman who will speak to it. Why 
should the world be blamed for not overhearing what 
literary men and women say to each other ? The talk 
is not meant for them. It has nothing in it for them ; 
and there is a feeling among them — not thoroughly well- 
defined, perhaps, but real — that they are defrauded. 
All this feeling of contempt for the non-literary world 
on one side, and this jealousy of the literary class on the 
other, will not exist for a moment after the relations be- 
tween them are practically recognized. When the 
world is served, it will regard its servant as its bene- 
factor, and the great interest of literature will be pros- 
perous. Book after book falls dead from the press, be- 
cause, and only because, it is not the medium of service. 
The world finds nothing in it that it needs. Why should 
the world buy it ? The golden age of American litera- 
ture can never dawn until the world has learned to look 
upon the literary class as its helper, its inspirer, its 
leader in culture and thought ; and it can never learn to 
look thus upon that class until it has been ministered to 
in all its wants by direct purpose, in simple things as 
well as in sublime. 



The Interest of Fiction. 
"Daniel Deronda" has been perused by divines, 
lawyers, merchants, women and girls. Wherever it has 
been read, it has excited an interest equalled by few 
histories that have ever appeared. This is an age of 
science — of " popular science," — the age of revelations 



Literature. 95 

in knowledge and revolutions in thought — but no other 
form of expression to which the age has given birth has 
so enchained the attention of so large and intelligent an 
audience as this has done. It was anticipated with lively- 
pleasure ; it has been read with profound attention ; it 
has been discussed as earnestly as if every statement and 
incident and revealed relation were as real as o.ur every- 
day life, and as if the outcome were as genuine a fact as 
history records, or science determines. 

What is the reason of all this ? The most obvious 
answer — that which lies nearest the surface — is that there 
is nothing so interesting to men and women as men and 
women. The never-dying interest that interplays be- 
tween the sexes, the display of new combinations of 
traits in the formation of character, the revelation of new 
phases of old forms of character, the depiction of na- 
tional peculiarities and types, the unravelling of what 
seem to be threads of destiny running between and unit- 
ing various lives, the dramatic developments when these 
lives come into close relations, — coalescing or colliding, 
— the grand progressions, the happenings, the incidents, 
the accidents, the happinesses, the miseries, the 
triumphs, the defeats, the wide sweep onward to a con- 
summation — all these enlist a deep sympathy ; and if 
the art of the writer be good, they are history, having all 
the charm of the most charming history. We know a 
little of what life is to ourselves : it is natural for us to 
wish to know what it is to others. We like to get inside 
of other life — to watch its motives, its internal and ex- 
ternal controlling forces, its actions and reactions, its 
purposes and plans, its powers and passions, and- to 
witness the final outcome. In truth, the study of others, 
thrown into varied relations, is a study of ourselves and 
our friends ; and ourselves and our friends interest us 
more than science, or politics, or metaphysics. 



g6 Every-Day Topics. 

There is a universal recognition, too, that the love of 
the sexes for each other is the master passion of human- 
ity. It is lively in the young, and its memories, at least, 
linger among the old, as the sweetest they possess. The 
roses and violets may not be fresh with the latter, but 
their odor still lingers about the vases in which they were 
laid away to wither and to fade. So love is always in- 
teresting to all, and the novel that does not contain it, 
in some form, always disappoints. Love, indeed, may 
be called the staple passion of the novel. Without it, 
novels would hardly be written ; and it is found only in 
the novel and the poem. It is either above or below the 
dignity of history ; science never undertakes its analy- 
sis, and philosophy severely lets it alone, or only treats 
it in the dry, objective way that it would discuss anger 
or pride. So the novel is specially interesting in its 
treatment of the love of the sexes, and so it appeals to 
the dominant passion of the race. 

Characterization has become a prominent trait of the 
modern novel. The old novels dwelt mainly among the 
events and incidents of life ; but the men and women 
were much alike. In the modern novel, we have closely 
defined characters, so that the men and women we find 
in it impress themselves upon us by force of individual- 
ity. We love them, admire them, despise them, as if 
they were real. They come to us as interesting, indi- 
vidualized studies — as new acquaintances, consistent 
evermore with themselves, and building up for themselves 
separate memories in our minds. These fresh individ- 
ualities are even more interesting to us than if we had met 
them in actual life ; for the novelist helps us to study 
and weigh them justly. This matter of characterization 
has done, perhaps, more than love to make the modern 
novel a universal companion. The study of types, and 
especially types of character, is a philosophical study, 



Literature. 97 

and many a great mind that does not care for love, or 
for the dramatic element in life and literature, studies a 
character with supreme interest. 

Again, all men are interested in a strife of good and 
evil forces ; and these enter into every acceptable novel. 
A novel that is wholly bad is disgusting; and a novel 
that is wholly good is hardly less so. There is very little 
in any novel so intensely interesting as the strife be- 
tween its good and evil elements ; and the novelist who 
does not sympathize with the good element, and make 
it triumphant in the grand outcome of his story, can only 
hold his audience by marvellous exhibitions of power 
in description and characterization. Whatever dogmas 
we may hold concerning the total depravity of human 
nature, it is not to be denied that men and women uni- 
versally sympathize with the innocent and the good, in 
their strife with the intriguing and plotting of the bad, 
and that they rejoice only in the triumph of the former. 
This strife between good and evil, between justice and 
injustice, between frank innocence and jealous malice, is 
a strife with which all are familiar — a strife that enters 
into every life and every society ; and that is where the 
novel touches the moral element in men and women. 
So there are multitudes caring little for love, perhaps, 
and less for typical character, who find their interest in 
a novel mainly in its exhibition of antagonistic moral 
forces, that find a resolution in a triumph of the right. 

All this means something more than instruction : it 
means amusement. Anything that pleasantly interests 
and absorbs the mind is recreation, when it comes out- 
side of the demands of work. There is a small number, 
enlarging, perhaps, from year to year, who read novels 
from an artist's stand-point, — who are critics, who find 
their satisfaction in the artistic development of character 
and plot, who delight in style, and weigh a dramatic 
5 



98 Every -Day Topics. 

climax in scales, who study a novel as a novel ; but the 
multitude read a novel simply for the pleasant occupa- 
tion of their minds. Life is humdrum, or fatiguing, and 
they come to the novel only for forgetfulness, or the 
pleasant excitement that a contemplation of new scenes 
and new characters affords. To such as these, a good 
novel is a benediction, for it relieves them of their 
burdens, clothes the commonplace with romance, and 
gives new meaning to human action and human life. 

To suppose that fiction could permanently appeal to 
so many classes of mind if it were only fiction, is to sup- 
pose an absurdity. Fiction is most powerful when it 
contains most truth ; and there is but little truth that 
we get so true as that which we find in fiction. So long 
as history is written by partisans, and science by theo- 
rists, and philosophy by hobby-riders, the faithful 
studies of human life, as we find them in the best novels, 
are the truest things we have ; and they cannot fail to 
continue to be the source of our favorite knowledge, our 
best amusements, and our finest inspirations. 

Books and Reading. 
Rev. Dr. William M. Taylor has recently delivered in 
this city a very valuable and interesting lecture, on the 
subject which we have written as the title of this article. 
One of the most suggestive passages of the lecture was 
that relating to personal character as the basis of suc- 
cessful reading. We do not remember any special 
reference to the means through which this character is 
lost, by reading itself, although it was suggested ; and 
to these it should be profitable to call attention. After 
all, the character necessary to profitable reading is, 
when we come to measure and analyze it, hardly more, 
and little else, than the power of study — the power to fix 
and hold the attention, to master principles and details, 



Literature. 99 

to seize the dominant motive of a book, and to appropri- 
ate and assimilate what there is in it for the reader, of 
food for personal culture. 

At some period of the life of every man and woman 
of fairly good education, the power of study has been in 
possession. Any man or woman who has once studied 
successfully has possessed the qualifications for profit- 
able reading ; and we believe that there are compara- 
tively few who do not become conscious of the loss of 
this power, in a greater or less degree. Disuse of the 
power will account for this loss in many instances — in- 
deed, in most instances. The cares of business or the 
household, the diversions of society, sometimes the lack 
of opportunity to get good books, leave the power of 
study to dissipation. Beyond these, and more mischiev- 
ous than these, is a cause of this loss of power in the 
kind of reading indulged in. The pursuit of one class 
of reading to excess, in accordance with a pronounced 
individual taste, disqualifies for another class. A man 
with a taste for poetry, so strong that his power for study 
is not called into use at all, may lose his power for study- 
ing history or philosophy, and vice versa. A woman 
with a decided love of novel-reading may indulge in her 
taste or passion to such an extent that it is an absolute 
pain to her to undertake to read anything else. A per- 
son with antiquarian tastes may become so devoted to 
their gratification that he can fix his attention upon noth- 
ing that relates to the current interests of society or 
the state. Newspaper-reading is one of the most fruitful 
causes of the loss of the power to study. To a newspa- 
per-reader, an antiquarian book is more dry than dust, 
and history no more significant than a last year's al- 
manac. 

In these days, all men and women read something, 
but the trouble is that by reading in a single vein, which 



100 Every-Day Topics. 

so strongly appeals to their individual tastes and per- 
sonal idiosyncrasies that it is not study at all, they lose 
their power to study anything else. The rule for suc- 
cessful and profitable reading would, in the light of these 
facts, seem to be to read only what one does not like to 
read. That reading which costs no effort and necessarily 
dissipates the power of study, is that which we should 
indulge in only for recreation, while that which we know 
to be important in itself, and in its bearings upon broad 
knowledge and culture, should most engage our time 
and attention. The trouble is, not that we do not read 
enough, but that we read so much of that which simply 
pleases us as to destroy our power to read that which 
will edify and enlarge us. There are many aspects in 
which newspaper reading is preferable to much that is 
considered essential to high culture. It is undoubtedly 
dissipating to the power of study, but so is any other 
reading which is pursued as a passion. It has this ad- 
vantage : that it never detaches the mind from a supreme 
interest in the affairs of to-day. There are studies which 
separate a man from his time — which shut off his sym- 
pathies from the men and the movements around him. 
There is a kind of dilettanteism which rejoices in mous- 
ing in dark corners for the curiosities of history or art, 
which is wise about great nothings — wise about bric-a- 
brac, wise about antique gems, wise about coins, wise 
about classical antiquities, wise about old books of whose 
contents it knows little, wise about dead and useless 
things, and foolish enough to plume itself upon its wis- 
dom. Now, any reading that does not make us better 
citizens — more capable of meeting and mastering the 
needs of the time and generation in which our life is 
cast, is reading which we cannot afford to engage in. 

Young men of ambitious aims are fond of asking advice 
as to a " course of reading.' 7 The safest advice that can 



Literature. 101 

be given them is to read least the books they like best, 
if they would retain their power to study, or to read 
profitably at all. A special, strong liking for one kind 
of literature betrays a one-sided nature, or a one-sided 
development, which demands complementary culture 
in other directions. The neglected books of the world 
are histories and works upon moral and intellectual phi- 
losophy. The present is the day of novels, and, what is 
about as nearly their antipodes as possible, scientific 
knowledge and culture. That history in whose instruc- 
tive light we should weave the history of our own time — 
that history through which we make the acquaintance of 
our kind, as they have lived and acted under various in- 
stitutions and circumstances, and that philosophy by 
which we become acquainted with ourselves, and our 
higher powers and relations, are comparatively little 
read. It is in these works, mainly, that the power of 
study is missed, and in these mainly that it is to be re- 
gained. We say this very decidedly, and yet we know 
that there are men whose whole life is here, and who 
stand in great need of the influences of poetry and fiction 
as food for starved imaginations. No man liveth by 
bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of 
the mouth of God. We need food from every side, of 
every kind, and the man who finds that he has lost that 
power of study which alone can seize and appropriate it, 
should win it back by patient exercise. 

Literary Virility. 
One of the most notable characteristics of such writers 
as Shakespeare, Scott, Thackeray, and Dickens, is what 
may be called, for lack of a better word, virility. They 
write like men. There is no dandyism or dilettanteism 
about them. If they deal with the passion of love, they 
deal with it heartily ; but it is not the only passion which 



102 Every -Day Topics. 

enters into their work. Hate, revenge, avarice, ambi- 
tion, all play their part. Love is not the only passion 
that inspires them. It is not regarded as the begin-all, 
and the end-all of life. They deal with great questions 
and large affairs. They find themselves in a world where 
there is something to be done besides dawdling around 
petticoats and watching the light that dances in a curl. 
They do not exhaust themselves on flirtations or in- 
trigues. They enter into sympathy with all the motives 
that stir society, all the interests that absorb or con- 
cern it, and by this sympathy they touch the universal 
human heart. Their poems and novels are pictures of 
life in all its phases ; and the homely joys of a cot- 
tager's fire-side, the humble cares and ambitions of the 
simple hind, the disgusting "tricks and manners" of 
socials shams, as well as the greedy ambitions of the 
miser or the politician, are depicted with the same 
fidelity to fact as the loves and relations of the sexes. 

We expect, of course, that a man will write of that, 
which fills him. Out of the abundance of the heart 
the mouth speaketh. A young man will naturally write 
of love, because that is the master passion with him. 
Life has only gone to that extent with him. It would be 
unnatural for him to write of much else, because noth- 
ing so powerful as love has thus far entered into his life. 
It is the most virile thing that he can do. But youth 
passes away, and, with it, the absorbing character of 
the passion of love, so far as it concerns him. Then 
come to him the great affairs, the great questions, the 
great pursuits of life. For him to revert to, and try to 
live in, this first period — to heat over the old broth, to 
thrash over the old straw, to simulate transports he no 
longer feels, and to pretend to be absorbed by the petty 
details of boyish courtship and girlish ways and fancies 
— is to compromise, or sacrifice his manhood. He de* 



Literature. 103 

scends in this to the work of a school-girl, who strives 
to anticipate what he tries to remember. He turns his 
back upon the acting, suffering world in which he lives, 
with all its hopes and despairs, its trials and triumphs, 
its desires and disappointments, its questions of life and 
death, its aspirations and temptations, its social, polit- 
ical and religious tendencies and movements, and tries 
to amuse himself and the world by puerilities of which 
he ought to be ashamed, and labors strenuously to con- 
vict himself of the lack of literary virility. 

He is something less than a man who can live in such 
a world as this, and in this age, and find nothing better 
to engage his pen than descriptions of ribbons, pouting 
lips, and divine eyes ; who dwells upon the manner in 
which a woman disposes of her skirts, or complements 
the color upon her cheek by some deft way of wearing 
her scarf, and makes up his entire work of the stuff that 
is to be found among the dreams and dalliances of the 
sexes. There is quite as much of effeminacy in the choice 
of literary material as there is in the mode of treating 
it when chosen. Of course, the man who chooses small 
topics and small material is the very man to treat them 
in a small way. He will pet a phrase as he will the 
memory of a pretty hand. He will toy with words as if 
they were tresses. In short, he will be a literary dandy, 
which is quite a different thing from being a literary 
man. 

It is the theory of the literary dandy that love is the 
only available material for the novel and the poem ; but 
if he will go back to the works of those who are named 
at the beginning of this article, he will recognize the 
fact that the characters of most importance, and the 
incidents of most significance and interest in them, are 
those with which the passion of love has very little to do. 
If it existed at all, it was incidental to something greater 



104 Every -Day Topics. 

and more important. Indeed, we should say that th 
least interesting material in any of the novels of Scott, 
Thackeray, and Dickens, is that which relates specially 
to the sexual relations. Mr. Pickwick and Captain 
Cuttle are worth all the women Dickens ever painted ; 
and the women of Scott are more interesting in them- 
selves than in any of their tender relations. It was the 
literary virility of these men — their solid, sincere, and 
consistent manhood — that made them great, and made 
them universally popular. Where would they be to-day 
if they had ignored the various life with which they held 
immediate relations, and confined their pens to the de- 
piction of creations and relations which, in experience, 
they had forever left behind ? 

If any reader will compare the scenes of the Last 
Judgment, as conceived and represented by Michael 
Angelo on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, or the mag- 
nificent pictures of Titian in Venice, or the masterly, 
but coarse, and often offensive, productions of Rubens 
everywhere, with the petty prettinesses and dainty per- 
fection of Meissonnier, he will understand what we mean 
by literary virility. The latter painter is, in art, exactly 
what the dandy is in literature. Even if the things he 
does are well done, the question whether they are worth 
doing remains to be answered. Virility in art is more 
easily to be detected — more easily demonstrable — than 
in literature, because a grand result can be brought at 
once under the eye in a picture, but the element is as 
truly essential and masterful in one as the other. The 
difference between undertaking to paint the Godhead 
and the minute delineation of a chasseur — to the very 
sparkle of his spur — is the difference between the work 
of a man and that of a dandy. 



Literature. 105 



Fiction. 

In the multiplied discussions of the nature and the offices 
of fiction, it is singular that reference is rarely made — 
almost never made — to the fictitious portions of the 
Bible. Every year or two the critics get at loggerheads 
over what is legitimate and illegitimate in fiction, over 
what is good art and bad art, over the question whether 
art in fiction may ever properly be charged with the 
burden of a moral or a lesson. There are some who go 
further than this, who go so far as to question whether 
religion and morality are legitimate material of art. 
These men may have a personal interest in the decision 
of the question, and we are inclined to believe they have 
such an interest. It is quite possible that people who 
have neither religion nor morality should object to the 
legitimacy of material which they would be obliged to 
borrow. 

Aside from the Sermon on the Mount, a large portion, 
and, we believe, the most important portion, of the truth 
proclaimed by the great Master, — the founder alike of 
our religion and our civilization, — was delivered in the 
form of fiction. The " certain man " whom he used so 
much for carrying the burden of his truth was always a 
fictitious man. A more symmetrically designed, and a 
more exquisitely constructed piece of fiction than the 
story of the Prodigal Son does not exist in any language. 
We call it a parable because in one field of life it repre- 
sents truth in another field of life. It conveys the 
truth which he desired to convey in the concrete. The 
gospel histories are begemmed by what may be called, 
without impropriety or irreverence, novelettes, and they 
are never constructed for the sake of their art, or for 
beauty's sake, but always as vehicles for conveying im- 
portant moral and religious truth to men. Their art is 
5* 



106 Every -Day Topics. 

perfect, simple as it is, but they assume to have no 
reason for being except the supreme reason of use. 

The oldest novel in existence is probably the Book of 
Job. We presume there may be some men left who 
still read the Book of Job as a veritable history, but 
those who are capable of judging will simply place it at 
the head of the realm of. fiction. That it is divinely in- 
spired we do not dispute. Indeed, the establishment 
of its divine inspiration as a fact, rather than the accept- 
ance of it as a matter of faith, would only strengthen 
the position we have always held, viz. , that the highest 
fiction is that which the most competently carries the 
most valuable burden of truth. The writer of the Book 
of Job was a man who, in the dawn, as it were, of hu- 
man history, revolved in a catholic, cultured and rev- 
erent mind the unequal dealings of God with men. 
Why did the good man have trouble ? Job was an 
excellent man, " perfect and upright," stripped of every 
good, and the art by which the writer presents him 
as, one after another, his possessions are taken from 
him, and his friends discuss with him the great problem 
that vexes him, with all the machinery of dialogues be- 
tween the Almighty and Satan, and the Almighty and 
Job himself, surpasses all the art of later times. Such 
imaginations and such descriptions, such conversations 
and arguments, such marvellous characterizations as are 
to be found in this great book can be found nowhere 
else in the whole range of literature. It is a book that 
has commanded the admiration as well as the profound 
reverence of the greatest men who have ever lived, and 
it is a novel in all its essential features, even though we 
call it a poem. 

The Book of Revelation is a novel, so far as it is an 
attempt to convey truth through typical forms and scenes 
and events. It is no record of facts, but a panoramic 



Literature. 107 

representation of conceptions born in, and addressed to, 
the imagination. In short, it is a creation of art — what- 
ever may be its origin, whether divine or human — by 
which certain great, shadowy thoughts and ideas are at- 
tempted to be represented to the mental apprehensions 
or the faith of men. There are many devout believers 
in the inspiration of the ancient Scriptures who regard 
the story of the creation and the fall of Adam rehearsed 
in the Book of Genesis as anything but a literal repre- 
sentation of historic facts. The essential truth is in the 
narrative, but it is represented in such a way that the 
simplest mind can apprehend and make use of it. The 
Song of Solomon is a very exquisite essay in the art of 
fiction. If the Books of Esther and Ruth are historical, 
they are certainly nothing to us but stories with morals, 
and very strong and beautiful stories they are. The 
names of Ahasuerus and Mordecai, and Haman and 
Esther, are nothing but names to the present reading 
world, which mean no more than those of Daniel De- 
ronda and Ralph Nickleby and Clarissa Harlowe. Boaz 
and Ruth might be Abelard and Heloise, or any other 
lovers. The two stories are to us simply stories, having 
no significance particularly as history, and no use, save 
as in an exquisite form of art they convey to us the 
moral lessons with which they are charged. 

Now, it is quite possible that the majority of literary 
critics would not take the Bible as authority for anything ; 
but we submit that a book which lies at the basis of the 
best civilization the world has ever known, that has held 
the profound reverence of the noblest minds that have 
ever existed, that has inspired the highest art of eighteen 
centuries, that has gathered to itself the tender affec- 
tions of countless generations of men, that has been the 
fountain of eloquence from which a million pulpits have 
drawn their supplies, that is so high and characteristic 



108 Every 'Day Topics. 

in its art that no attempt to imitate it ever has risen 
above the seeming of burlesque, is well worthy of the 
respect of literary men as a literary authority. 

It is fair to conclude that when fiction is used in the 
sacred books it is used not only legitimately, but used in 
the best way it can be used. The truth is, that all this 
talk about writing stories for the sake of the stories, 
about fiction for the sake of art, about the impropriety 
of burdening a work of fiction with a lesson or a moral 
is bosh and drivel. We do not dispute at all that a story 
may be written for the simple purpose of amusing the 
mind. We do not dispute that a story may legitimately 
be written in the interest of art alone. What we main- 
tain is, that all this is petty business when compared 
with the supreme uses of fiction, viz., the organization 
into attractive, artistic forms of the most valuable truths 
as they relate to the characters and lives and histories 
of men. A rose is beautiful and fragrant, and in its 
beauty and fragrance holds the justification of its being. 
But a field of roses would make a poor show, even in the 
matter of beauty, by the side of a wheat-field, every 
stalk of which is bending with its burden of substantial 
ministry to the wants of men. We simply maintain that 
the wheat-field is a better production than the rose-field. 
Let men raise roses if they can do no better. Let them 
raise pansies, marigolds, hollyhocks, anything they 
choose, -and let people delight in these who may, but 
don't let them presume to deny the legitimacy of wheat- 
growing, or assert the illegitimacy of all productions except 
flowers. With the facts relating to the prevalent bad art 
of stories with morals we have nothing to do. No good 
moral lesson excuses bad art, and no man has any right to 
burden such a lesson with bad art. If a man's art is not 
a royal vehicle for the progress of the moral he desires to 
honor and convey, then he has no call to be a novelist. 






Literaticre. 109 



Goodness as Literary Material. 

We can hardly imagine anything more curious as a 
subject of inquiry than the difficulty experienced by 
every writer of fiction in the attempt to paint a very good 
man or woman. It seems to be very easy to depict 
wicked people. The villains of the play and the novel 
appear in great variety, with no lack of types of the finest 
interest. Wickedness seems to be perennially fresh, as 
it is proverbially engaging. For instance : it would 
have been quite impossible for John Hay to write an ac- 
ceptable or an impressive poem about a sweet Christian 
fellow who had sacrificed his life to save a boat-load of 
passengers ; but he could paint Jim Bludso — a bad man 
— with a few touches that can never be forgotten. If he 
had undertaken to describe a good young man, who did 
not " chew," or drink, or swear, who taught a class in 
the Sunday-school, and who lived virtuously with his one 
wife, and rose at last into an act of heroism, he would 
not have found ten readers ; but the rough, coarse, pro- 
fane wretch, who had one wife at Natchez-under-the-hill, 
-and another one up in Pike, becomes at once a memora- 
ble hero in his hands. With all that may legitimately 
be said against Bret Harte's heroes and heroines, there 
is no question that many of them are made marvellously 
interesting by the forms of wickedness they represent. 
This much is true at lea"st, that, as literary material, the 
rough, low types of life and character to be found in 
California and on the border, are much superior to the 
best types to be found there. 

Perhaps the inquiry into the reason of this should go 
deeper, or start further back. It might be well to ask 
why it is that some of the most interesting people we 
ever met were scamps. It might be well to inquire why 
some of the best men we know are the least interesting. 



no Every -Day Topics. 

It might be instructive to learn why it is that a company 
of virtuous girls will be attracted by a man whose virtue 
they have reason to doubt, in the presence of those who 
are known to be men of purity and honor. These in- 
quiries might show us that goodness is not only less 
interesting to men as literary material than wicked- 
ness, but is less interesting in itself. It is undoubtedly 
true that we should rarely go among our best men and 
women for our most interesting characters. Certainly 
we should not go among the membership of our churches. 
There are churches the dead level of whose tasteless and 
flavorless Christianity is not only uninteresting but re- 
pulsive. Dr. Eggleston, in some of his Western Metho- 
dist types, gives us people who are interesting, but their 
flavor does not come from their Methodism, or their 
goodness, but from nature and character, formed under 
unusual circumstances. 

There are, undoubtedly, sufficient reasons for the un- 
lovely character, or the unattractive character, of many 
types of Christian goodness. There are brawling types, 
abject types, fashionable types, childish types, that of 
course are disgusting to all healthy minds. Then there 
is the type of goodness that is framed upon the moral 
law — built up upon the " Thou shalt not" — a goodness 
that is based upon repression of the bad rather than the 
development of the good. There are many types of 
Christian goodness which betray themselves as unnatural 
or superficial, as having their basis, not in a living prin- 
ciple, but in a mechanical plan or a scheme of policy. 
Of course all these are as far from being interesting as 
they can be. It is undoubtedly true that a character 
can only have the power to interest us when it is alive, 
positive, aggressive. Any life that is interesting must 
have a centre — not extraneous — but in itself. No life 
inspired and conducted by outside rules can possibly be 



Literature. in 

interesting to any other life. What this or that man, 
whether good or bad, will do of his own motion, in the 
circumstances that occasions bring around him, is what 
we are interested in. If we know that he is guided by a 
set of rules, that he is the subject of some compact or 
organization, and that certain penalties hang over him 
if he fail in any respect, we have no interest in him. 
The eagle caged is a most uninteresting bird ; but the 
eagle in a cloud, or on a crag, will hold the eye like a 
star. It is the free man who attracts us, and we are not 
sure that a good deal of the unattractiveness of goodness 
is not attributable to the impression that it is con- 
strained. 

Every wicked man has his own private principle of 
wickedness. He is endowed with certain appetites and 
passions — he entertains, privately, certain purposes, de- 
sires, ambitions — and we feel sure the moment we come 
into contact with him, that he will be sincere and con- 
sistent with himself. What he will do — how he will work 
out, on the plane of his individual nature, the evil that 
is in him — is what interests us. What the good man 
will do we already know. We understand the rule by 
which he conducts his life. If he is simply a moral 
man we understand his law. If he is a religious man, 
we not only understand his law, but we understand all 
the persuasives and dissuasives which lie around him in 
the institutions and creeds to which he has subjected his 
will, so that he only becomes particularly interesting to 
us when he breaks away from his laws and defies the in- 
stitutions to whose yoke he had bent himself. We can 
never be particularly interested in the man whom we 
can calculate upon. 

It is quite likely that some will say that we are inter- 
ested in wicked people because we are wicked — that the 
wicked engage our sympathy in a perfectly natural way, 



112 Every -Day Topics. 

but the facts will not sustain the theory. Whenever 
goodness becomes apprehended as a vital, independent 
force in a man, working its way naturally out in all rela- 
tions and all conduct, when it becomes aggressive and 
ingenious in its beneficence, and is incalculable in its 
sacrifices and heroisms, it will become good literary ma- 
terial, and not before. Whenever goodness crops out 
in a bad character, as it often does in one of Harte's 
heroes — -when it appears as a spontaneous human growth 
that could not at all have been calculated upon — how 
marvellously engaging it is ! But when it is made to 
order ; when a novelist sets out to make a good man or 
a faultless woman, how sure he is to fail ! What sorry 
muffs are all the particularly good men and women whom 
the novelists have presented to us ! They cannot possi- 
bly be made in the ordinary way. All art demands a fol- 
lowing of nature. Uncle Tom can be interesting as a Chris- 
tian because he has taken his Christianity like a child, or 
as a child takes its mother's milk. He has imbibed it. 
He knows little or nothing of dogma, but the heart and 
life of Christ are in him, working sweetly out through 
natural channels into acts and effects that are picturesque 
and engaging. Raphael painted some of the sweetest of 
his Madonnas from peasant mothers, and he at least 
understood that wherever he found the best human type 
of mother and child, it best represented the divine. 

One thing is at least sure : goodness in the hands of a 
literary man must not be of the type that is formed by 
creeds and institutions, if he would make it interesting. 
Whether there can be any true goodness outside of these 
we leave the dogmatist and casuist to decide. With that 
matter we have nothing to do in this article. We sim- 
ply say that art can never be effective in engaging the 
interest of those who study its works, if it strays from 
the natural fountains of feeling and life. The goodness 



Literature. 113 

it would depict must be innate and spontaneous, work- 
ing incalculably and through natural channels, a law 
unto itself, or it can never be made to appear attractive 
and picturesque. So long as it is in any way identified 
with well-known laws and creeds and institutions, it is 
not good literary material. We do not mean by this 
that beautiful Christian characters cannot be painted so 
that Christian people shall be sympathetically interested 
in them ; but we mean that the art instinct rejects them, 
and that they cannot be so painted that they will secure 
the interest of the universal literary mind. 

A Word about Newspapers. 
In all the discussion inspired by Mr. Whitelaw Reid's 
recent suggestive address on the newspaper, we have 
seen no mention made of a topic of the greatest interest 
to the reading public and of the greatest importance to 
the newspaper itself, viz., the practical confusion of 
moral and social values in the present conduct of the 
public press. If any simple, unsophisticated person 
were, for the first time, to take up a newspaper and to 
endeavor to judge what things in the moral and social 
world were considered of the greatest importance, what 
would he conclude, judging by the space and attention 
devoted to them in its pages ? In a large majority of 
instances, he would find a stingy column devoted to the 
discussions of a social science convention, and half a 
page to a murder or a boat race. He would find a 
column devoted to police reports, in which the disgust- 
ing records of vice and its awards would be recorded in 
detail, while the sermons of a Sunday, from the best 
minds in the country, would get no greater space. In 
the editorial discussions, party and personal politics 
would be found to predominate over everything in rela- 
tion to religion, morals, education, temperance, science, 



1 14 Every-Day Topics. 

and the whole range of social questions. The things of 
great moment are treated as if they were of the small- 
est importance, and the things of small importance are 
treated as if they were of the greatest moment. 

In all this there is a tremendous confusion of values 
that not only exhibits the worthlessness of the newspaper 
as a standard, but vitiates the public judgment. The 
standard is unsound and the influence is bad. The re- 
ply to this, of course, will be that the newspaper en- 
deavors to talk about that which the public likes to read 
about. If great space is given to a murder, or a boat 
race, it is because people in the mass like to read about 
these things. If little space is devoted to a great ser- 
mon, or a discussion of a social question, it is simply 
because nobody cares to read about them. Has it ever 
occurred to the editor who would put this in plea that he 
has had something to do in ministering to this depraved 
liking for things that are valueless ? — to this confusion 
of values in the public mind ? We certainly know of 
nothing more naturally stimulative of the love of low ex- 
citements than the way in which crime and vice are 
treated by the public press. The way in which a nasty 
scandal is treated, for instance, by the average news- 
paper is not only a foul disgrace to the press, but a most 
demoralizing power upon the public mind. It is a put- 
ting forward, by all the power of startling head-lines, and 
a sturdy array of exclamation points, and double-leaded 
details, of a thing of shame which modest people do not 
like to have mentioned in their homes or their hearing. 
It is giving the first place, for the consideration of men, 
women, and children, to a thing that ought to have the 
last place. The familiarity with vice and crime and 
social shame that has been acquired in this country dur- 
ing the last few years through the newspapers, has had 
the effect of a moral scourge. 



Literature. 115 

But we did not intend to insist on the moralities par- 
ticularly. That which comes under the notice of the 
newspaper press is of various value, considered from a 
thousand points beside the moral, and our point is, 
simply, that values are altogether confused in their 
practical treatment. Those matters are put forward 
which are of inferior value, and those are subordinated 
which are of superior value, until the newspaper alto- 
gether ceases to be, in any worthy sense, a leader of the 
public mind. 

If the newspaper of the future, which, according to 
Mr. Reid, is to have Greens and Froudes to do its re- 
porting, shall ever be reached, it will be a very different 
newspaper from that of to-day, which gives up its re- 
porting to men who are neither Greens nor Froudes. 
Men who love virtue and hate vice, and men who have 
some just sense of moral and social values, will devote 
their reporting mainly to that which will educate and 
improve rather than confuse and degrade their readers. 
If the world is improving — if we are making any reli- 
gious, moral, and social progress — then the business of 
the newspaper is not only to make a fair record of that 
progress, but to note all the steps and exhibit all the in- 
fluences by which it is reached. In faithfully attending 
to this business, it will have neither time nor space for 
the record of the frivolities and vices which now exclude 
so much that is of superior value and significance. 

The great tempter of the newspaper press is what is 
known as " Enterprise." If anything happens that peo- 
ple are curious about, even if it should be of small im- 
portance, " enterprise " dictates that it should be looked 
up and written down to its uttermost. It is in " enter- 
prise " that all the reporting newspapers try to outdo 
one another, and it is in this attempt to outdo one an- 
other that they do so much to confuse values in journal- 



Ii6 Every-Day Topics. 

ism. One newspaper must do what another does in the 
fear of suffering in its character for "enterprise." 
Newspapers do not try, apparently, to realize their own 
ideal, but to outdo each other in " enterprise." We do 
not know of a better man than Mr. Reid to undertake a 
realization of his own ideal, which, we fancy, does not 
vary very materially from our own, and to spare his 
i ' enterprise" for great things, so that the world may 
have one paper that, with a thoroughly catholic spirit, 
carries with its records a careful balance of values, and 
so that the public mind shall not be constantly misled, 
and that all that ministers to progress may have a fair 
chance. 

Vulgarity in Fiction and on the Stage. 

The average playwright has a fixed opinion that certain 
definite appeals must be made to the groundlings, in order 
to produce a successful play. There must be coarseness 
or profanity, or the half-disguised obscenity that can be 
put forth in a double entente, or else the great multitude 
will not be satisfied. As a consequence of this, many 
ladies do not dare to go to the theatre, or to take their 
children there. There is no question that these objec- 
tionable elements in plays have kept many more people 
out of the theatre than they ever attracted thither. Peo- 
ple — even vulgar people — are not pleased with vulgarity, 
and it is quite worth while to call attention to the things 
that the people are pleased with, both in the fictions of 
the book and of the stage. 

We have had a lyrical comedy running in all the thea- 
tres of the country during the last season — " Her Ma- 
jesty's Ship Pinafore " — which will illustrate a part of 
what we mean. Since we began to observe theatres at 
all, nothing has had such a run of popularity as this. 
Young and old, rich and poor, have been amused by it, 



Literature. 117 

and there is not a word in it, from beginning to end, 
that can wound any sensibility. It is a piece of delicious 
absurdity all through, and a man can enjoy two hours of 
jollity in witnessing it, which will not leave a stain upon 
him anywhere. It is simply delightful — pure fun — and 
the most popular thing that has appeared on the stage 
for the last ten years. We call attention to it specially 
to show that fun, when it is pure, is more popular a 
thousand times than when it is not. Nothing can be 
more evident to any man of common sense than that 
any admixture of unworthy elements in this play would 
damage its popularity. What is true of this play is true 
of any and every play. There is no apology whatever 
for making the stage impure. Even vulgar people do 
not seek the stage for impurity. They seek it for 
pleasure, and they find the purest plays the most sat- 
isfactory, provided only that the pleasure -giving ele- 
ment is in them. A playwright who is obliged to resort 
to coarse means to win the applause of coarse men, 
convicts himself of a lack of capacity for writing a good 
play. 

If a man wishes to hear high moral sentiments ap- 
plauded as they are applauded nowhere else, let him go 
to a low theatre. When the villain of the play gets his 
just retribution, and the hero, standing with his foot 
upon his neck, above his prostrate form, makes an ap- 
propriate apostrophe to virtue, then the house comes 
down. Indeed, it loses no opportunity to applaud that 
with which its daily life has very little to do, as if it were 
trying to make up by its votes and acclamations for the 
sins and the remissnesses of its practical life. It takes a 
pretty pure playwright to satisfy an audience made up 
largely of thieves and prostitutes. 

In these days, tragedy is at a discount. In the old 
times, when the world moved slowly, and life was not 



n8 Every- Day Topics. 

overworked or torn in pieces by high contending pas- 
sions, men and women liked to have their sensibilities 
wrought upon. There was, at any rate, a desire for a 
different play from that which modern times call for. 
There are people who think that the theatre audience is 
degraded from its old quality. We doubt it. We have 
no doubt, indeed, that the modern audience is better 
than the ancient one, and is made up of men and women 
of a highly improved culture. The times have changed, 
and life has become so active and overburdened and so 
full that men go to the theatre to laugh. The one thing 
that they need most is forgetfulness of care, in innocent 
pleasure. To the modern man and woman, life is a tra- 
gedy. The newspapers are full of tragedies. We swal- 
low them every morning with our coffee. What we ab- 
solutely need is fun, jollity, mirth, forgetfulness ; and 
the stage must adapt itself to this want or go to the 
wall. The writer of " H. M. S. Pinafore " is a public 
benefactor, worthy of any reward we can make him ; 
and Mr. Sullivan may snap his fingers at the stupid 
critics who accuse him of having stooped from his 
dignity to float this little play upon his excellent music, 
for he has won the gratitude of the English-speaking 
world. 

It is with novels as with the stage, vulgar people do 
not like to contemplate vulgar people. In the novel, 
vulgar people delight to meet with gentlemen and ladies. 
They have enough of the other sort at home, and among 
their friends. They would like to get into better society. 
They wish to see those who are different from them- 
selves, and in different circumstances. 

" Mi-lord," said a soft-voiced page, dressed in blue and gold, 
entering : " the Ambassador waits. " 

Sir Edward turned from his ivory escritoire, with a frown, and 
responded, " Bid him enter." 



Literature. 119 

At this moment, the Lady Geraldine rose from her embroidery, 
and with a fair blush mantling her classic features, swept from the 
apartment. 

" Hold! " said Sir Edward. 

The lady turned, and gave him a single glance of scorn, as she 
closed the door and sought her boudoir. 

It is the vulgar people who read this sort of stuff, and 
they read it because it represents a kind of life quite 
absurdly antipodal to their own. The third or fourth- 
rate novelist who produces it lives nearer to the people 
than his superiors, and knows what they like. It is true, 
too, that the best novelist must not deal with vulgar ma- 
terials too exclusively. No matter how clever he may 
be, it will not do for him to forget that good people get 
tired in novels of the same people of whom they would 
get tired in their drawing-rooms, and particularly of 
those whom they would never receive in their drawing- 
rooms. They get tired of any novelist who never gives 
them a gentleman or a lady. 

It comes to this, then, in the novel and on the stage : 
we want good company and we want mirth. We want 
fun and we want it pure. The theatre thinks that the 
Church is hard upon it. There was a time when the 
novel-writer thought the Church was hard upon him ; 
but the Church now not only reads novels, but uses 
them in the propagation of religious ideas and religious 
living. The theatre, for many years, has had itself to 
blame for the attitude of the Church toward it. People 
are visiting the good ship Pinafore now who never en- 
tered a theatre before, and this simply because it minis- 
ters to their need of amusement without offending their 
sensibilities by coarseness, or their eyes by exhibitions 
that are only at home in a vulgar dance-house. 



i 



120 Every -Day Topics. 



Literary Materials and Tools. 

When Bulwer was in the enjoyment of his young pop- 
ularity as a novel-writer, before Dickens had been 
heard of on this side of the Atlantic, he issued his 
" Ernest Maltravers." The memory of that book has 
lingered with us during these forty years as a glaring in- 
stance of an appeal, by a powerful popular author, to the 
coarser and more destructive passions of men and women. 
He pictured his lovers, brought them into association, 
and so gave direction to the reader's imagination that it- 
self, without his words, pictured the fact and scene of 
a seduction. It was the theme of excited common talk 
among the young men of the time, to whom it became 
a delicious and powerful poison. We do not know 
whether he ever repented of his terrible sin, but we 
know that he did incalculable harm by it. We do not 
know whether it stands in his latter editions just as it 
appeared in the first ; but there are many elderly men , 
into whose memory a certain page of that book, with 
convenient rows of asterisks, is fairly burned, 

The question naturally arises whether sins against so- 
cial purity are legitimate literary material. A critic of 
" Roxy," in one of the newspapers, objects to the book 
on account of the relations between Mark Bonamy and 
Nance Kirtley. The condemnation is quite sweeping, 
and the only inference we can make is, that sins of 
impurity are not legitimate literary material — in the 
critic's opinion. Why ? we ask. What is there in hu- 
man life that is not legitimate material ? Why should 
the novelist have the free handling of murder, of suicide, 
of theft and robbery, of slander, and a thousand cruel- 
ties that need not be named, and be forbidden to touch 
the abuse that is associated with the strongest and holiest 
affections and passions of human nature ? If love has 



Literature. 121 

dangers, is it wrong to point them out ? Is virtue very 
much nourished nowadays in an atmosphere of igno- 
rance ? Is there any such thing as an atmosphere of 
ignorance in these days ? 

We can get at a fair conclusion upon this matter by 
comparing the effect of these two books upon the mind. 
We have noted the effect of Bulwer's book. It was the 
intention of the writer, without question, to excite the 
prurient imaginations of his readers, and not to place 
the deed in its proper relations to the peace and well- 
being of the parties and of society. If any one can 
rise from the perusal of u Roxy " without realizing that 
Mark Bonamy went through a terrific degradation, and 
that a coarse pleasure was purchased by him at a price 
too terrible to invite imitation, he must be very singu- 
larly constituted. One book leaves, or is calculated to 
leave, the reader in love with vice ; the other leaves or 
is calculated to leave him horrified by it, and disgusted 
with it. 

We might quote the freedom with which the Bible — 
a book intended for universal use — employs material of 
this sort ; but as we do not intend to appeal to the 
Bible moralities to make good our position, we simply 
allude to the matter and drop it. We maintain that all 
which illustrates human nature and human history is 
legitimate literary material, the writer being simply 
bound — not as a moralist, but as a literary man — to 
represent everything in its proper relation to the scheme 
of things which he finds established, as it concerns the 
happiness and well-being of the individual and society. 
When a novelist represents vice as a thing that in any 
way " pays," he lies, and is therefore untrue to his art. 
W r hen he so represents the sin of social impurity that it 
shall appear more attractive than repulsive, more de- 
lightful than blameworthy — when he represents it shorn 
6 



122 Every -Day Topics. 

of its natural consequences — half harmless to the guilty 
ones, and quite venial in the eye of society, he betrays 
his untruth to literary art, and reduces and vulgarizes 
the standard of his own work. This may be said, or 
pleaded in the way of an argumenturn ad hominem: that 
it does not become an editor who spreads before families 
of readers the details of a hundred adulteries and seduc- 
tions and other crimes against social purity every year, 
accompanied with the usual amount of reportorial and 
judicial jesting, to take to task a conscientious novelist 
who treats the crime he depicts as God and nature dic- 
tate. 

There is another point about which there are contra- 
rieties of opinion. It makes no difference whether a 
novel-writer be clerical or lay, Christian or un-Chris- 
tian, he feels deprived of the use of his legitimate tools 
in the prohibition placed upon profanity. Some writers 
will not accept the law, because only by the use of what 
is called profanity can they properly represent the char- 
acters and situations in hand. We are not alluding to 
the disgusting " blanks " of Colonel Starbottle, or to 
any of the writers whose low tastes lead them to prefer 
profanity to decency, and who sympathize with it to the 
very tips of their tongues. We venture to suggest that 
Mrs. Stowe and Dr. Eggleston and George MacDonald 
feel the denial of the use of profane language in their 
novels as a real harm to their art. Men must speak their 
vernacular or they cannot speak naturally, and to put 
" dang it" into a man's mouth when he said something 
else, or " the deuce" when he said "the devil," is to 
dodge and palter for the purpose of not giving offence. 

Still we think a man is quite at liberty to choose here. 
There is nothing vital about this matter of tools. The 
vitalities attach to materials. It is doubtless better that 
the novelist bow as far as he can to the popular preju- 



Literature. 123 

dice against the use of profane language in literary art. 
In New England there is great popular reverence for the 
devil, which we do not at all share ; so it is probably best 
to present him always in a disembowelled form, preserv- 
ing only the initial and final consonants. We are to re- 
member that there is a considerable portion of every 
community which believes that all besides themselves are 
children, and are to be treated as such — by all sorts of 
publications except the daily newspapers. These seem 
to be quite at liberty to choose whatever material comes 
to their hands — the worse the better. 

Our Garnered Names. 
Great genius is of no age or nation. We have made 
stupendous advances in all possible directions within the 
last three hundred years, yet Bacon still stands as the 
proudest name among English philosophers, and Shak- 
spere is unequalled among English poets. It would be 
hard to name a living poet — after these centuries of cul- 
ture — who equals Spenser, yet all the names we have 
mentioned are laid among the very foundations of 
English literature. The works associated with them are 
among the first products of thought and art in the per- 
fected English tongue. There was, of course, a great 
amount of rubbish produced, which, having suffered the 
fate of all rubbish, has passed out of existence. But the 
great books remain, with the great fact that neither 
science nor art, neither learning nor culture, neither po- 
litical nor social progress, can do anything to reproduce 
genius. Nay, it looks as if none of them have the power 
to assist genius in its development, and in the pro- 
ducts of its art. Whenever a Shakspere appears, he 
works with such tools as he finds ready for his hand, and 
produces that which is immortal. It matters nothing 
into what period of a nation's literary history he is born, 



124 Every -Day Topics. 

for he does not appear as the ripe product of a great age, 
but as a special creation of the Almighty. 

The death of Mr. Bryant naturally calls the attention 
of thoughtful Americans to the foundations of our own 
literature, and leads to speculations as to its future. 
Certainly the first years of our national life were not 
very fruitful in a literary way. Very little work pro- 
duced in the seventeenth century is worth preserving, 
and we can say hardly more of the product of the eigh- 
teenth. We lay the foundations of our houses with rub- 
ble up to the level of the earth, and the first products of 
American literature can hardly be called anything but 
rubble. They lie in the catalogues an undistinguishable 
mass. We are simply aware that they are poor and im- 
perfect stuff; but during this unexpired nineteenth cen- 
tury, something worthy and enduring has been done. It 
looks like a growth. It looks as* if the great strides we 
have taken were the result of long climbing to a high 
vantage ground. It seems, at first view, as if we may, 
reasonably expect that the twentieth century will as far 
surpass the present as the present surpasses the past in 
literary production. We doubt, however, whether we 
may legitimately come to any such conclusion. The 
first songs of any nation are usually the freshest. They 
work up the local material. They have the first oppor- 
tunity of response to the native influences. There is 
something in the sturdy freedom of the formative pro- 
cesses of society peculiarly favorable to the develop- 
ment of genius. A great nation, developing itself as it 
were out of the ground, is a good deal nearer the original 
fountains of inspiration than it becomes after ages of 
conventionality and artificial life. 

All this is true, and it is quite possible that we have 
unconsciously and unappreciatingly been living during 
the most memorable age of American literature. Cer- 



Literature. 125 

tainly that age cannot be contemptible which has pro- 
duced Cooper and Irving, Prescott and Motley and 
Bancroft, Bryant and Longfellow and Whittier, Holmes 
and Lowell, Taylor and Stedman and Stoddard, Haw- 
thorne and Ticknor and Emerson, not to mention many 
eminent names in other departments of letters. The ac- 
count is made up with half of these. We can expect but 
little more from some of those who survive, but we have 
enough in the works of these men to form a body of 
literature which may legitimately be designated as 
American, and one which may be regarded by Amer- 
icans with complacency. It is, at least, pure. Almost 
all the early literatures of other nations possess a 
gross, fleshly element, which is entirely lacking, and 
which would not be tolerated, in ours. It is true that 
our literature is the product of a branch of English cul- 
ture. We have not come out from savagery into civili- 
zation, with a stock of legends and myths on which to 
build a characteristic literature, but what Hawthorne 
and Whittier have done and others have attempted, 
shows that we possess a mine of quaint, strange history 
which will be worked thoroughly hereafter. We have 
lacked a mellow, hazy past — a background for our pic- 
tures — and in the necessity of painting our surroundings 
and drawing our inspiration from the present, we have 
unconsciously been forming a background for those who 
are to succeed us. We do not believe the time will ever 
come when Hawthorne's interpretations of colonial his- 
tory will cease to be interesting, when Whittier's lyrics 
will cease to inspire, when Bryant's sweet and solemn 
voicing of nature's meanings and life's mysteries will 
fail in their music to the ears of men, when Longfellow's 
psalms of life will not meet with a response in the souls 
of the people. The poets who are so new to us, though 
so much beloved, are to be the old poets by and by, and 



126 Every -Day Topics. 

we suspect that the future critic will come back to these 
days, revel in their literary glories, and contrast his own 
degenerate contemporaries with the hearty and homely 
singers of this blessed early time. 

Of one thing we may be reasonably sure, viz. , that 
when the genuine geniuses of this period shall be appre- 
ciated at their full value, and the names we have re- 
hearsed shall have become classic, their countrymen will 
have ceased discussing Poe and Thoreau and Walt 
Whitman. Why an age which can produce such a poet 
as Bryant, who is as healthy and health-giving in every 
line as the winds that soar over his native hills, can be 
interested in the crazy products of a crazy mind, so far 
as to suppose that they have any poetry in them, or any 
value whatever, except as studies in mental pathology, 
we cannot imagine. How an age that possesses a Long- 
fellow and an appreciative ear for his melody can tol- 
erate in the slightest degree the abominable dissonances 
of which Walt Whitman is the author, is one of the un j 
solved mysteries. There is a morbid love of the ec- 
centric abroad in the country which, let us hope, will 
die out as the love of nastiness has died out. At present 
we say but little about our immortals, and give ourselves 
over to the discussion of claims of which our posterity 
will never hear, or of which they will only hear to wonder 
over, or to laugh at. 

Is it Poetry? 
Mr. Walt Whitman advertises, through his friends, 
that the magazines send back his poetry. Why do they 
do it? Is it because they are prejudiced against the 
writer? Is it because they have no respect for his 
genius, no admiration for his acquirements ? No ; on 
the whole, they like him. They believe him to be 
manly, bright, and erudite, but they have a firm con- 



Liter attire. 127 

viction that his form of expression is illegitimate — that 
it has no right to be called poetry ; that it is too involved 
and spasmodic and strained to be respectable prose, 
and that there is no place for it, either in the heaven 
above, or in the earth beneath, or in the waters under 
the earth. If we could, by any sort of chemistry, mix 
the rhapsodical passages of Carlyle's and Emerson's 
prose together, we should have a pretty near approach 
to Walt Whitman's verse. It is simply rhapsodical 
prose, with a capital letter to head the lines. There is 
no attempt at rhythm, no attempt at rhyme, which would 
bring it within the domain of " numbers," and no even 
strength and flow that would make good its claim to be 
elegant prose. What is it ? Is it prose-poetry or poetic 
prose ? Is it something outside of both — a new thing, 
as yet unnamed, the outgrowth of a new genius, and the 
inauguration of a new era of expression ? 

Let us try a little experiment. We have before us 
two of Mr. Emerson's books — his latest, and his " Con- 
duct of Life." From these most excellent productions 
let us cull a few passages in Walt Whitman's style : 

" Our Copernican globe is a great factory or shop of power ; 

" With its rotating constellations, times, and tides. 

"The machine is of colossal size; the diameter of the water- 
wheel, the arms of the levers, and the volley of the battery, 

" Out of all mechanic measure ; and it takes long to understand 
its parts and workings. 

11 This pump never sucks ; these screws are never loose ; this 
machine is never out of gear. 

" The vat, the piston, the wheels and tires never wear out, but 
are self-repairing. 

" Is there any load which water cannot lift ? 

" If there be, try steam ; or, if not that, try electricity. 

" Is there any exhausting of these means ? 

" Measure by barrels the spending of the brook that runs 
through your iield. 



128 Every- Day Topics. 

" Nothing is great but the inexhaustible wealth of nature. 
" She shows us only surfaces, but she is million fathoms deep. 
" What spaces ! what durations ! dealing with races as merely 
preparations of somewhat to follow." 

And again, Emerson : 

11 A strenuous soul hates cheap successes. 

"It is the ardor of the assailant that makes the vigor of the 
defender. 

" The great are not tender at being obscure, despised, in- 
sulted. 

" Such only feel themselves in adverse fortune. 

V Strong men greet war, tempest, hard times, which search till 
they find resistance and bottom. 

" Periodicity, reaction, are laws of mind as well as of matter. 

" Bad kings are generous helpers, if only they are bad 
enough." 

And again : 

11 To this material essence answers truth in the intellectual 
world ; 

"Truth, whose centre is everywhere and its circumference no- 
where ; whose existence we cannot disimagine — 

" The soundness and health of things, against which no blow 
can be struck, but it recoils on the striker. 

" Truth, on whose side we always heartily are." 

Even Walt Whitman's propensity for catalogues can 
be matched in Mr. Emerson's prose, as witness : 

" In Boston, the question of life is the names of eight or ten 
men. 

" Have you seen Mr. Allston, Dr. Channing, Mr. Adams, Mr. 
Webster, Mr. Greenough ? 

" Have you heard Everett, Garrison, Father Taylor, Theodore 
Parker ? 

" Have you talked with Messieurs Turbinewheel, Summit- 
level, and Locofrupees ? 

11 Then you may as well die." 



Literature. 129 

And again the catalogue : 

" You shall not read newspapers, nor politics, nor novels ; 

** Nor Montaigne, nor the newest French book. 

" You may read Plutarch, Plato, Plotinus, Hindoo mythology, 
and ethics. 

" You may read Chaucer, Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Milton — 
and Milton's prose as his verse. 

11 Read Collins and Gray, read Hafiz and the Trouvers, 

"Nay, Welsh and British mythology of Arthur, and (in your 
ear) Ossian." 

We have said that if we could, by some sort of chem- 
istry, mix Carlyle's and Emerson's rhapsodical prose, we 
could come very near to an imitation of Walt Whitman's 
poetry, for the man has a strong individuality, and is 
more robust than Emerson. He is not so fine of consti- 
tutional fibre, not so fine of culture. He has a rough 
vigor, and a disposition to involutions of language quite 
characteristic of Carlyle and never witnessed in Emer- 
son ; yet, as we quote Walt Whitman hereafter, we 
think the reader will be surprised with the resemblance 
which his work bears to the passages we have quoted 
from Emerson's prose — passages which mount toward 
poetry, and which, as they burst out from the even flow 
of his graceful pen, remind one of the occasional blow- 
ing of a whale on a sunny sea, while the great fish keeps 
steadily on in his element. If he were to lie still and 
blow all his life-time, and say to the nations, " lo ! this 
is poetry ! " the nations would pretty unanimously de- 
clare that there was something the matter with the fish. 
Particularly would this be the case if he had already put 
into form some of the most beautiful poems in the lan- 
guage, and thus declared what he considered true poetry 
to be. 

Before Walt Whitman, let us try a little of Carlyle, in 
6* 



130 Every -Day Topics. 

order to justify our statement, once repeated, concern- 
ing the analogies existing between the works of the two 
men. This from " Sartor Resartus" : 

" Who am I ? What is this me ? 

" A voice, a motion, an appearance ; 

" Some embodied, visualized idea in the Eternal Mind? 

*■ Cogito, ergo sum. Alas! poor cogitator, this takes us but a 
little way. 

"Sure enough, I am, and lately was not; but whence, how, 
whereto ? 

"The answer lies around, written in all colors and motions, 
uttered in all tones of jubilee and wail. 

" In thousand-fingered, thousand- voiced, harmonious nature. 

"But where is the cunning eye and ear to whom that God- 
written Apocalypse will yield articulate meaning ? 

" We sit in a boundless phantasmagoria and dream-grotto. 

" Boundless, for the faintest star, the remotest country, lies not 
even nearer the verge thereof," etc. 

And again, Carlyle : 

" Thus, like some wild-flaming, wild-thundering train of Heav- 
en's artillery, 

" Does this mysterious mankind thunder and flame, in long- 
drawn, quick-succeeding grandeur through the unknown deep ! 

i( Thus, like a God-created, fire-breathing spirit-host, we emerge 
from the Inane ; 

" Haste stormfully across the astonished earth, then plunge 
again into the Inane. 

" Earth's mountains are levelled, and her seas filled up in our 
passage. 

" Can the earth, which is but dead and a vision, resist spirits 
which have reality and are alive ? 

" On the hardest adamant, some footprint of us is stamped in. 

" The last rear of the host will read traces of the earliest van. 

" But whence ! Oh, Heaven ! whither ? " 

And now, having given a taste of Emerson's and Car- 
lyle's poorest prose— for this is what it really is — a prose 



Literature. 131 

which should never be chosen by any young man for a 
model, let us dip into the pages of Walt Whitman, and 
see if it be any better or greatly different. We think it 
will be found that what Whitman calls in his own verse 
" songs," is very like these passages in form, and possi- 
bly inferior to them in quality. We quote Whitman : 

" How beggarly appear arguments before a defiant deed ! 

14 How the floridness of the materials of cities shrivels before a 
man's or woman's look ! 

" All waits or goes by default till a strong being appears ; 

" A strong being is the proof of the race, and of the ability of 
the universe ; 

M When he or she appears, materials are overawed. 

" The dispute on the soul stops ; 

4 'And old customs and phrases are confronted, turned back, 
or laid away." 

Again Whitman, in a complete poem, which he 
entitles " Thoughts :" 

" Of ownership ; as if one fit to own things could not at pleasure 
enter upon all, and incorporate them into himself or herself. 

" Of water, forests, hills ; 

44 Of the earth at large, whispering through medium of me ; 

44 Of vista. Suppose some sight in arriere, through the forma- 
tive chaos, preserving the growth, fulness, life, now attained on 
the journey. 

" (But I see the road continued, and the journey ever 
continued ;) 

— " Of what was once lacking on earth, and in due time has 
become supplied, and of what will yet be supplied. 

" Because all I see and know I believe to have purport in 
what will yet be supplied." 

And now, for a purpose, we quote one of Whitman's 
latest " songs ; " 



132 Every- Day Topics. 



" TO A LOCOMOTIVE IN WINTER. 

11 Thee for my recitative! 

M Thee in the driving storm, even as now — the snow — the 
winter day declining ; 

"Thee in thy panoply, thy measured dual throbbing, and 
thy beat convulsive ; 

u Thy black cylindric body, golden brass and silvery steel ; 

" Thy ponderous side-bars, parallel and connecting rods 
gyrating, shuttling at thy sides ; 

"Thy metrical, now swelling pant and roar — now tapering in 
the distance : 

" Thy great protruding head-light fix'd in front ; 

" Thy long, pale, floating vapor-pennants, tinged with delicate 
purple ; 

" The dense and murky clouds out-belching from thy smoke- 
stack ; 

"Thy knitted frame — thy springs and valves — the tremulous 
twinkle of thy wheels ; 

"The train of cars behind, obedient, merrily following, 

" Through gale or calm, now swift, now slack, yet steadily 
careering : 

" Type of the modern ! emblem of motion and power ! pulse 
of the continent ! 

V For once, come serve the Muse, and merge in verse, even 
as here I see thee, 

"With storm, and buffeting gusts of wind, and falling snow ; 

"By day, thy warning, ringing bell to sound its notes, 

" By night, thy silent signal lamps to swing. 

" Fierce-throated beauty ! 

" Roll through my chant, with all thy lawless music, thy swing- 
ing lamps at night ; 

''Thy piercing, madly-whistled laughter, thy echoes rousing 
all; 

" Law of thyself complete, thine own track firmly holding ; 

" (No sweetness debonair of tearful harp or glib piano thine), 

" Thy trills of shrieks by rocks and hills retum'd, 

" Launch'd o'er the prairies wide — across the lakes, 

" To the free skies, unpent, and glad, and strong." 



Literature. 133 

The reader will notice how much more rhythmical 
this is than the quotations that preceded it — how much 
better it is, in every respect, in consequence, and how 
fine and strong the last three lines are, which are good, 
honest, decasyllabic verse. The man is capable of 
poetry, and always ought to have written it. The best 
that he has done has been to set down, in the roughest 
condition, the raw material. Other men have done the 
same thing better, and never dreamed that they were 
writing " songs. " Even a " chant" has to be rhythmi- 
cally sung, or it cannot be sung at all. The materials 
in a butcher's stall and a green-grocer's shop contain the 
possibilities and potencies of a dinner, but we do not 
see any poetry in them until they are cooked and served 
to handsomely dressed men and women, and come and go 
upon the table in rhythmical courses, yielding finest nutri- 
ment and goodliest flavors. There is no melody without 
rhythm, and a song must be melodious. Emerson says 
that M metre begins with the pulse-beat," and quotes 
Victor Hugo as saying : " An idea steeped in verse be- 
comes suddenly more incisive and more brilliant ; the 
iron becomes steel." Here is a distinction, certainly, 
between prose and verse. He quotes, too, one who says 
that Lord Bacon " loved not to see poesy go on other 
feet than poetical dactyls and spondees ; " while Ben 
Jonson said " that Donne, for not keeping of accent, 
deserved hanging." If he had only quoted these sayings 
to Walt Whitman in that early letter, should we not all 
have been richer by the sum of a poet ? 

We are, perhaps giving too much space to this article, 
but the idea is sought to be conveffed by Walt Whit- 
man's friends that he is badly used — that a great genius 
is sadly misunderstood or neglected. We have written 
this because no one else has written it. W T e have re- 
frained from citing, or even alluding to, those portions 



1 34 Every-Day Topics. 

of his early book which are most open to criticism, and 
especially those portions of which, in the subsidence of 
his grosser self, he must now be ashamed. We have 
desired to represent him at his purest and best, and 
with none but the kindliest feelings toward him, and the 
heartiest wishes for his good fame. We believe that in 
his theories and performances he is radically wrong — 
that he is doing nothing but advertising himself as a lit- 
erary eccentric, and that he ought to have, and will 
have, no following. 



CERTAIN VIRTUES AND VIRTUOUS 
HABITS. 

Character, and what Comes of It. 

ABOVE all other things in the world, character has 
supreme value. A man can never be more than 
what his character — intellectual, moral, spiritual — makes 
him. A man can never do more, or better, than deliver, 
or embody, that which is characteristic of himself. All 
masquerading and make-believe produce little impres- 
sion, and, in their products and results, die early. Noth- 
ing valuable can come out of a man that is not in him, 
embodied in his character. Nothing can be more un- 
philosophical than the idea that a man who stands upon 
a low moral and spiritual plane can produce, in litera- 
ture or art, anything valuable. He may do that which 
dazzles or excites wonder or admiration, but he can pro- 
duce nothing that has genuine value, for, after all, value 
must be measured by the power to enrich, exalt, and 
purify life. If art were an end, in itself— if there 
were any meaning in the phrase " Art for art's sake" — 
then what we say about character would not, or need 
not, be true ; but art is not an end in itself any more 
than milk, or flannel, or tilth, or harvest. The further 
art is removed from ministry, the more it is divorced 
from it, the more illegitimate does it become. Pyro- 
techny attracts many eyes, and may excite a great deal 
of wonder and admiration, but when we talk about the 



136 Every- Day Topics. 

value of fire, we only think of its service in the furnace 
and on the hearth. 

It is claimed by a certain class of critics that we have, 
nothing to do with the character of an artist or a writer. 
They forget that a knowledge of a man's character is a 
short cut to a correct judgment of his work. It is only 
necessary to know of Edgar A. Poe that he was a man 
of weak will, without the mastery of himself — a dissi- 
pated man — a man of morbid feeling — a self-loving man, 
without the wish or purpose to serve his fellows — to 
know that he could never write a poem that would help 
anybody, or write a poem that possessed any intrinsic 
value whatever. His character was without value, and, 
for that reason, he was without the power of ministry. 
His character was without value, and nothing of value 
could come out of it. His poems are one continued, 
selfish wail over lost life and lost love. The form of his 
art was striking, but the material was wretchedly poor in 
everything of value to human life. No human soul ever 
quotes his words for comfort or for inspiration. Byron 
is a more conspicuous example of the effect of poor or 
bad character upon art than Poe. He was immensely 
greater than Poe in genius, stronger in fibre, broader in 
culture, and bolder in his vices. He embodies his char- 
acter in his verse, with great subtlety and great in- 
genuity. Fifty years ago, he was read more than any 
other poet. Young men drank the poison of his Don Juan 
with feverish lips, but, the draught over, the book never 
was taken up again. He wrote wonderful verses, and 
some of them, written under certain pure and high in- 
spirations, assert his claim to greatness ; but, as a whole, 
the works of Byron have gone out, and are hardly read at 
all in these days. 

Our own Bryant, and Longfellow, and Whittier, and 
Holmes, and Lowell are all men of character, and the 



Certain Virtues and Virtuous Habits. 137 

outcome of their art is as hearty and healthy as a moun- 
tain wind. Knowing any one of these men is to know 
that their work is good. There is more of the element 
of ministry in Longfellow's " Psalm of Life" than in all 
that Byron and Poe ever wrote. Value in character 
makes value in verse. Value in character makes value 
in pictures, in sculptures, in all embodiments of art. It 
is vain to talk about equalling what we call " The Old 
Masters " in art, until we can equal the old masters in 
character. When we have a race of artists who are as 
religious, as self-devoted, as high-minded, and as fully 
surrendered to the divinest inspirations as the old masters 
were, we shall have young masters who will be quite their 
equals. Petty painting is the offspring of petty char- 
acter. Artists cannot lift their work without first lifting 
themselves. It is impossible that a thoroughly bad man 
should be a good artist of any sort, for let it be remem- 
bered, we repeat, that the values of art all rest, and al- 
ways rest, upon its power of ministry. Art is simply a 
vehicle for conveying the values of character to the lives 
of men, and when there are no values of character, there 
is nothing to be conveyed, no matter how beautiful or 
noteworthy the vehicle may be. Great moral harm is 
often done by studied and systematic dissociation of an 
author or an artist with his work. We are told that we 
have nothing whatever to do with the writer or the 
painter ; we have only to do with what he produces. 
This may be true and right to a certain extent, but what 
if a writer or painter be notoriously immoral and disso- 
lute ? Suppose an actress, with exceptional powers upon 
the stage, but with a reputation stained all over with 
scandal, whose sins against social purity are patent, no- 
torious, undisputed — presents herself for our suffrage 
and patronage — what shall we do with her ? Shall we 
send our sons to contemplate her charms, and review 



138 Every -Day Topics. 

her base career ? Shall we visit her with our wives 
and daughters, and honor her with our dollars and our 
courtesies ? Shall we do what we can to obliterate in 
her mind, as well as our own, all sense of moral distinc- 
tions ? We are told we that have nothing to do with 
the woman. We have only to do with the actress. So 
we have nothing to do with a preacher, we suppose — 
only with the sermon. People generally think they have 
a great deal to do with the preacher, and that the ser- 
mon is of very little consequence when it is not the sin- 
cere product of a good character. 

Character must stand behind and back up everything 
— the sermon, the poem, the picture, the play. None 
of them is worth a straw without it. Thirty years ago 
Jenny Lind was with us, and with her marvellous gift of 
song, she brought to us an unsullied character. It was an 
honor to touch her hand, and she went about the land as a 
missionary of womanly purity. All men and all women 
honored her with a higher admiration than her marvellous, 
art could inspire. The noble womanhood which stood 
behind her voice was an uplifting influence, wherever that 
voice was heard ; and the prostituted womanhood that 
stands behind other voices that we know, taints every ear 
that hears, and degrades every heart and life that con- 
sents to tolerate it so far as to sit in its presence. 

Personal Economies. 
In this country, we naturally go to New England, and, 
alas ! to an earlier time, for examples of personal econ- 
omy and thrift. Almost any New Englander can recall 
a country minister who, on his little yearly salary of 
three or four hundred dollars, managed, by the help of 
his wife, to live respectably and comfortably, educate a 
large family for self-support and social usefulness, and 
lay up something every year against a rainy day which 



Certain Virtues and Virtuous Habits. 139 

comes in all men's lives. We have wondered how it was 
done, but we know it was done, and that he died at last 
the possessor of a nice little property. New England 
has been noted for its hard soil and its hard conditions 
generally, yet there is no other spot on the face of the 
earth that contains so much human comfort to the 
square mile. Every man born on New England soil 
tries and expects to better his condition during his life, 
and he goes to work at the beginning with this end defi- 
nitely in view. The rich men of New England are men 
who began their prosperity with humble savings. What- 
ever their income was, they did not use it all. Twenty- 
five or fifty dollars a year was considered quite worth 
saving and laying by. These small sums, placed at 
interest, accumulated slowly but surely, until the day 
came at last when it was capital, to be invested in busi- 
ness with larger profits. A fortune acquired in this way 
was cohesive, strong and permanent. 

We are quite aware that something of grace and lov- 
ableness was lost in the habit of these small economies. 
Men grew small quite too often, and pinched and stingy, 
by the influence of the habit of penny savings. This has 
been brought against New England as a reproach, but 
New England has replied, with truthfulness and pride, 
that no people of the country or of the world have been 
more benevolent than her own economical children. 
She points to the vast sums she has expended on Chris- 
tian missions, and to the great public charities whose 
monuments crown her hill-tops, and shows that at the 
call of Christianity and humanity her purse, filled with 
such painstaking and self-denial, flies open and empties 
itself to fill the measure of the public need. At any rate, 
we know that there is not a State in all the West that 
has not gone to New England for the money to build her 
towns and her railroads, and that if she has ever been 



140 Every-Day Topics. 

laggard in her hospitalities, such as she has practised 
have been at her own expense, and not at that of her 
creditors. New England is rich — and this, after all, is 
what we are trying to say — notwithstanding a hard soil 
and an inhospitable climate. Circumstances were against 
her from the beginning, and economy was what enabled 
her to conquer circumstances, and to lift herself to the 
commanding position of wealth and influence which she 
.holds to-day. The men who had an income of $300 a 
year, at the beginning lived on $200. The men who 
had an income of $500 lived on $300. Those whose in- 
come reached $1,000 lived on half of that sum, and so 
on. They practised self-denial. They had no great 
opportunities for making money, and knew that wealth 
could only come to them through saving money. The 
old farmer who, when asked what the secret of his wealth 
was, replied : " When I got a cent I kep' it," told the 
whole story of New England thrift and comfort. Now, 
if we look around us here in the city of New York, wq 
shall, in the light of this New England example, learn 
why it is that so many men and women drop into pauper- 
ism with such fearful rapidity on the first stoppage of 
income. We know very few men of fixed incomes who 
do not live up to the limit of these incomes, whatever it 
may happen to be. A man who this year has a salary 
of $2,000 uses it all, and when it goes up to $3,000 or 
$4,000 he uses it all in the same way. It seems to make 
no difference how much he receives — the style and cost 
of living expand immediately so as to absorb all that 
comes. Those who have no fixed income, and are en- 
gaged in trade, adopt the style of the prosperous men 
around them, and strain every effort to bring up their 
income to meet the requirements of that style. Every 
family, instead of endeavoring to see how small they 
can make their expenses, endeavor to see how large they 



Certain Virtues and Virtuous Habits. 141 

can make them, or how large their income will permit 
them to be. The fixed purpose to save something out 
of every year's income, and so to graduate expenses that 
something shall be saved — the policy of rigid self-denial 
for the purpose of accumulating property, even though 
it be slowly, does not apparently exist in this commu- 
nity. So, when the bread-winner is disabled, or dies, 
his family drops into abject and utterly helpless poverty 
in a day, and all life is embittered thenceforward, sim- 
ply because no self-denial had been practised while the 
worker lived, or was able to work. The man of small 
or modest income looks around him and sees many who 
are rich and who are not obliged to think of every penny 
they spend. He regards himself as their social equal, 
and wonders why it should be necessary for him to be 
so pinched in his spendings and so plain in his surround- 
ings. He does not consider how much, and exactly 
what, the wealth which moves his envy has cost. He 
may be sure that somewhere, at the foundation of all the 
wealth he sees, there was once a man who practised 
rigid self-denial, and studiously lived within his income, 
and saved money although his income was small. All 
fortunes have their foundations laid in economy. The 
man who holds the money to-day may have inherited it 
through the accident of birth, but it cost his father or his 
grandfather years — perhaps a life-time — of economy and 
self-denial. There is no royal road to wealth any more 
than there is to learning. It costs hard work, and the 
relinquishment of many pleasures, and most men may 
have it who will pay its price. If they are not willing 
to do this, why, they must not complain of their lot when 
their day of adversity comes ; and they ought to have 
the grace to make themselves just as little of a nuisance 
as possible to those who have secured a competence and 
paid the honest price for it. 



142 Every- Day Topics. 

American Honesty. 

Any man who has travelled in Europe knows what the 
temptation is to buy and bring home articles that can be 
procured more cheaply there than in America, under the 
expectation that the customs officers will let them in 
free of duty ; and every observer knows that millions of 
dollars' worth of goods are imported annually in this 
way that pay no revenue to the Government. It is no- 
torious, too, that many of our citizens go to Canada to 
buy clothing, and wear it home for the purpose of cheat- 
ing the Government. Men of wealth and luxuriously 
living women,- who would scorn to deal dishonorably 
with their neighbors, rejoice in the privilege of cheating 
their own Government, and boast of their success in 
doing so. They do not even suspect that they are doing 
wrong in this thing. They have no idea that they are 
acting meanly or dishonestly. They look upon this 
genteel kind of smuggling as a smart and harmless trick, 
and display to their friends the results of their shrewd- 
ness with pride and self-gratulation. We may find 
among these smugglers thousands who look upon the 
corruptions of politicians with indignation, yet not one 
of them could succeed in his smuggling enterprises save 
through the unfaithfulness of public officers, whom they 
reward for their treachery with a gift. 

Would it not be well for us to remember, before we 
condemn the dishonesty which is so prevalent in the 
public service, that the politicians and office-holders are, 
on the whole, as honest as the people are ? All that 
either of them seem to need is a temptation to dishonesty 
to make them dishonest. The office-holder takes ad- 
vantage of his position to cheat his Government, and 
every genteel smuggler who lands from a European 
vessel, or crosses the Canada line, does the same thing 



Certain Virtues and Virtuous Habits. 143 

from the same motive. The radical trouble, with people 
and politicians alike, is the entertainment of the idea 
that stealing from the Government is not stealing at all — 
that a man has a right to get out of his Government all 
that he can without detection. They have not only- 
brought their consciences into harmony with this idea, 
but they wilfully break the law of the land. In short, 
for the sake of a trifling advantage in the purchase of 
goods, they are willing to deceive, to tempt public 
officers to forswear themselves, to break the laws of 
their country, and to deprive the Government that pro- 
tects them of a portion of the means by which it sustains 
itself in that service. 

It is a startling fact that there is never a train wrecked 
without pickpockets on board, who immediately proceed 
to plunder the helpless passengers. These may not be 
professionals. They may never have picked a pocket in 
their lives before, but the temptation develops the thief. 
There is never a battle fought in any place where there 
are not men ready to plunder the slain. The devil, or 
the wild beast, has been there all the time, only waiting 
for an invitation to come out. Men look on and see a 
great city badly managed — see mayors and aldermen 
and politicians engaged in stealing and growing rich on 
corruption ; but these men find thousands ready on all 
sides to engage in corrupt contracts, to render false 
bills of service, and to aid them in all rascally ways to 
fill their pockets with spoil. The men whom we send 
to our Legislatures to represent us seem quite willing to 
become the tools of corrupt men, and it is marvellous to 
see with what joy the residents of any locality receive 
the patronage of the Government, whether needed or 
not. That member of Congress who secures to his dis- 
trict the expenditure of Government money for the build- 
ing of any " improvement," no matter how absurdly un- 



144 Every -Day Topics. 

necessary, does much to secure his re-election. There 
is no denying the fact that the people are just as fond of 
spoil as the politicians are. 

We find fault with the management of corporations, 
but all our corporations have virtuous stock-holders. 
Did anybody ever hear of these stock-holders relinquish- 
ing any advantage derived from dishonest management ? 
Do they protest against receiving dividends of scrip 
coming from watered stock ? Do they not shut their 
eyes to "irregularities," so long as they are profitable, 
and do not compromise their interests before the law ? 
There is not a corporation of any importance in America 
which is not regarded as a fair subject for plunder by a 
large portion of the community. If a piece of land is 
wanted by a corporation, it is placed at once at the 
highest price. Any price that can be got out of a cor- 
poration for anything is considered a fair price. Cor- 
porations are the subjects of the pettiest and absurdest 
claims from all sorts of men. Men hang upon some of 
them like leeches, sucking their very life blood out of 
them. 

And now, what do all these facts lead to ? Simply to 
the conclusion that dishonesty in our Government and 
dishonesty in all our corporate concerns is based on the 
loose ideas of honesty entertained by our people. We 
have somehow learned to make a difference between 
those obligations which we owe to one another as men, 
and those which we owe to the Government and to cor- 
porations. These ideas are not a whit more prevalent 
among office-holders and directors than they are among 
voters and stock-holders. Men are not materially 
changed by being clothed with office and power. The 
radically honest man is just as honest in office as he is 
out of it. Corrupt men are the offspring of a corrupt so- 
ciety. We all need straightening up. The lines of our 



Certai7i Virtues and Virtuous Habits. 145 

morality all need to be drawn tighter. There is not 
a man who is willing to smuggle, and to see customs 
officers betray their trust while he does it — willing to 
receive the results of the sharp practice of directors of 
corporations in which he has an interest ; willing to re- 
ceive the patronage of the Government in the execution 
of schemes not based on absolute necessity ; willing to 
take an exorbitant price for a piece of property sold to 
the Government or to a corporation — who is fit to be 
trusted with office. When we have said this, we have 
given the explanation of all our public and corporate 
corruption, and shown why it is so difficult to get any 
great trust managed honestly. All this official corrup- 
tion is based on popular corruption — loose ideas of hon- 
esty as they are held by the popular mind ; and we can 
hope for no reform until we are better based as a 
people in the everlasting principles of equity and right- 
doing. If we would have the stream clear, we must 
cleanse the fountain. 

Keeping at It. 
Every man has his own definition of happiness ; but 
when men have risen above the mere sensualities of life 
— above eating and drinking, and sleeping, and hearing, 
and seeing — they can come to something like an agree- 
ment upon a definition which, when formulated, would 
read something like this : " Happiness consists in the 
harmonious, healthy, successful action of a man's 
powers." The higher these powers may be, and the 
higher the sphere in which they move, thehigher the 
happiness. The genuine u fool's paradise " is ease. 
There are millions of men, hard at work, who are look- 
ing for their reward to immunity from work. They 
would be quite content to purchase twenty- five years of 
leisure with twenty-five years of the most slavish drudg- 
7 



146 Every-Day Topics. 

ery. Toward these years of leisure they constantly 
look with hope and expectation. Not unfrequently the 
leisure is won and entered upon ; but it is always a dis- 
appointment. It never brings the happiness which was 
expected, and it often brings such a change of habits as 
to prove fatal, either to health or to life. 

A man who inherits wealth may begin and worry 
through three -score years and ten without any very de- 
finite object. In driving, in foreign travel, in hunting 
and fishing, in club-houses and society, he may manage 
to pass away his time ; but he will hardly be happy. It 
seems to be necessary to health that the powers of a 
man be trained upon some object, and steadily held 
there day after day, year after year, while vitality lasts. 
There may come a time in old age w T hen the fund of 
vitality will have sunk so low that he can follow no con- 
secutive labor without such a draft upon his forces that 
sleep cannot restore them. Then, and not before, he 
should stop work. But, so long as a man has vitality to 
spare upon work, it must be used, or it will become a 
source of grievous, harassing discontent. The man will 
not know what to do with himself; and when he has 
reached such a point as that, he is unconsciously digging 
a grave for himself, and fashioning his own coffin. Life 
needs a steady channel to run in — regular habits of work 
and of sleep. It needs a steady, stimulating aim — a trend 
toward something. An aimless life can never be happy, 
or, for a long period, healthy. Said a rich widow to a 
gentleman, still laboring beyond his needs : " Don't 
stop; keep at it." The words that were in her heart 
were : " If my husband had not stopped, he would be 
alive to-day." And what she thought was doubtless 
true. A greater shock can hardly befall a man who has 
been active than that which he experiences when, having 
relinquished his pursuits, he finds unused time and un- 



Certain Virtues and Virtuous Habits. 147 

used vitality hanging upon his idle hands and mind. The 
current of his life is thus thrown into eddies, or settled 
into a sluggish pool, and he begins to die. 

We have, and have had, in our own city some notable 
examples of business continued through a long life with 
unbroken health and capacities to the last. Mr. Astor, 
who has just passed away, undoubtedly prolonged his 
life by his steady adherence to business. There is no 
doubt that he lived longer and was happier for his con- 
tinued work. If he had settled back upon the conscious- 
ness of assured wealth, and taken the ease that was so 
thoroughly warranted by his large possessions, he would 
undoubtedly have died years ago. Commodore Van- 
derbilt, also among the recently deceased, w T as a nota- 
ble instance of healthy powers, continued by use. Many 
people wonder why such men continue to work when 
they might retire upon their money and their laurels ; 
but they are working, not only for happiness, but for 
life. 

The great difficulty with us all is that we do not play 
enough. The play toward which men in business look 
for their reward should never be taken in a lump, but 
should be scattered all along their career. It should be 
enjoyed every day, every week. The man who looks 
forward to it wants it now. Play, like wit in literature, 
should never be a grand dish, but a spice ; and a man 
who does not take his play with his work never has it. 
Play ceases to be play to a man when it ceases to be re- 
laxation from daily work. As the grand business of 
life, play is the hardest work a man can do. 

Besides the motives of continued life and happiness to 
which we have called attention in this article, there is 
another of peculiar force in America, which binds us to 
labor while we live. If we look across the water, we 
shall find that nearly all the notable men die in har- 



148 Every-Day Topics. 

ness. The old men are the great men in Parliament 
and Cabinet. Yet it is true that a man does not so 
wholly take himself out of life in Europe as in America 
when he relinquishes business. A rich man in Europe can 
quit active affairs, and still have the consideration due to 
his talents, his wealth, and his social position. Here, 
a man has only to " count himself out" of active pur- 
suits, to count himself out of the world. A man out of 
work is a dead man, even if he is the possessor of mil- 
lions. The world walks straight over him and his mem- 
ory. One reason why a rich and idle man is happier in 
Europe than at home is that he has the countenance of a 
class of respectable men and women living upon their 
vested incomes. A man may be respectable in Europe 
without work. After a certain fashion, he can be so 
here ; but, after all, the fact that he has ceased to be 
active in affairs of business and politics makes him of 
no account. He loses his influence, and goes for noth- 
ing, except a relic with a hat on, to be bowed to. So 
there is no way for us but to " keep at it ; " get all the 
play we need as we go on ; drive at something, so long 
as the hand is strong and steady, and not to think of rest 
this side of the narrow bed, where the sleep will be too 
deep for dreams, and the waking will open into infinite 
leisure. 

Suspected Duties. 
There is a large number of conscientious men and wom- 
en in all society who suspect, with a considerable degree 
of pain, that they are not performing the duties which 
are incumbent upon them. They see duties to be done 
that somebody ought to do. They do not understand the 
reason why these duties do not belong to them, and yet 
they do not discover any motives, or any fitness in them- 
selves to engage in them ; and they blame themselves, 



Certain Virtues and Virtuous Habits. 149 

in a weak way, for the fact. They see the duties dis- 
tinctly ; they apprehend the necessities of society ; and 
finding themselves competent to judge, and capable of a 
great many things, it seems to them that these duties are 
theirs. Rather, perhaps, they do not discover any rea- 
sons why they are not theirs. The consequence is a 
vague feeling of unrest and dissatisfaction with them- 
selves. Somebody ought to lead in some political, or 
social, or religious movement. Should they do it, or 
should they leave it to somebody else ? Perhaps they 
are called upon to lead, and they shrink from the work 
with a dread of which they are ashamed, but which they 
feel quite incompetent to overcome. They are called 
upon to speak publicly, to pray publicly, to put them- 
selves forward as leaders, to assume responsibility, yet 
their whole nature rebels, and they are not only dis- 
gusted with themselves but they become most unhappy 
self-accusers. There are multitudes of men and women 
upon whom the burdens of suspected duties are heavier 
than the real ones, which they are only too glad to bear 
at any cost. 

Now we believe there has been a great deal of wrong 
teaching upon this matter, especially in the churches. 
Modest, retiring men, and more modest and retiring 
women, have been forced to their feet or their knees, 
and to public utterance, by the unjust assurance that 
it was their duty to testify publicly to the faith that was 
in them. Church-going people have all heard men pray 
and speak who had no gift of utterance, who could 
neither help themselves nor edify others, in the per- 
formance of what they suspected, and what they were 
assured was their duty. Their work was an unspeakable 
pain to themselves, and a distress to others. The stere- 
otyped phrases of prayer, and the common-places of 
exhortation, uttered with embarrassment, and listened 



1 50 Every-Day Topics. 

to with sympathetic pain, have made the conference 
ifteeting, in numberless instances, a dismal gathering — 
unattractive, in every respect, and unrefreshing. The 
man who suspects his duty, goes there with dread, and 
sits through all with distressing apprehension. 

Politics go wrong. The politics of a neighborhood or a 
district are in bad hands. A true man, seeing this, begins 
at once to question his own duty in the premises. He 
feels that something ought to be done by somebody, but 
he feels no impulse or ability to lead in the work of re- 
form, and blames himself for what he unmistakably 
regards as his own cowardice. A social evil arises, 
which somebody ought to suppress, and the good citizen 
feels himself incompetent or unmoved to grapple with it, 
and condemns himself for his own apathy. He suspects 
himself of shirking "a duty, and is unhappy over it. He 
cannot rise in a public gathering and denounce wrong. 
He cannot meet and dispute with vicious or wrong- 
headed men. He dreads a personal collision of convic- 
tion and will as he would a street-fight. 

Now, all these unhappy people, who live constantly in 
the presence of suspected duties, deserve the profound- 
est sympathy, no less than the wisest instruction. They 
are usually people who, by the purity of their personal 
character, and their sensitive conscientiousness, have a 
right to a comfortable mind, and a peaceful life. Duty 
goes hand-in-hand with ability. Men are to give in 
charity each " according to his ability," in money not 
only, but in all benevolent effort. The man w T ho has one 
talent is not required to return the interest on ten. The 
eye is not the hand, and can never do the service of the 
hand. The hand is not the eye, or the ear, or the foot, 
and can only work in its own way. The eye may see a 
stone to be lifted, or kicked out of the road, but it needs 
to take no blame to itself because it feels no ability to 



Certain Virtues and Virtuous Habits, 151 

remove the obstacle. Men are not like each other ; they 
are most unlike. One delights in public speech, and 
is moved by all the powers of his nature to engage in it. 
One is at home only with his pen, but he goes into the 
battles of society bravely with that. One is a peace- 
maker, and finds his most grateful office in reconciling 
differences in families and social organizations. One is 
limited in power to his own family, or those bound to 
him by the ties of nature ; yet, in thousands of instances, 
these men are living with the painful suspicion that they 
are neglecting duties that actually lie far outside of the 
sphere of their abilities. 

We suppose that when Mr. Moody was preaching in 
the Hippodrome there were hundreds who suspected 
that they ought to imitate his life and labor. Perhaps 
some of them ought to do so ; and the chances are that 
such of them as ought to do so will do so. They will be 
moved to it irresistibly, because the powers in them, 
corresponding to his, will clamor for their natural ex- 
pression. But a man who is not moved to do this, is 
not convicted of being a poorer Christian than Mr. 
Moody by that fact. Mr. Moody has a gift for preach- 
ing — a gift for approaching men personally, and direct- 
ing them wisely — a gift that has been greatly improved 
by use, of course, but still a gift, without which he could 
never have begun his mission. Most men have no gift 
for public speech, and therefore public speech is no part 
of their duty. They need not suspect themselves on 
this account, or blame themselves, or in any way make 
themselves unhappy over it. 

There are a great many kinds of work to be done in 
the world, and just as many varieties of men who are 
made to do it. No one man can do the work of another. 
The business of each is to find exactly, or as nearly as 
he can, the work he is best fitted to do, and to doit with 



152 Every -Day Topics. 

all his might. This entire, overshadowing burden of sus- 
pected duties ought to be lifted, and the great world of 
dissatisfaction and self-condemnation that lies under it 
opened to the sunlight of peace. Our social and our 
religious teachers, especially the latter, have a duty in 
this matter toward their disciples which they need not 
suspect for a moment. They have no right to set a man 
to doing that which he can never do with profit to him- 
self or others, or instil the feeling among those who 
listen to their instructions that their duty lies in lines 
outside of their conscious or proved abilities. The man 
who does his duty where he stands, with such implements 
as God has given him, has a right to the enjoyment of 
peace and satisfaction ; and to make him suspect that 
he ought to do something more and something else, is to 
do him a life -long injury and a great wrong. It is to 
make a pitiful slave of one who has the right to be free. 

The Prudential Element. 
We have received a very candid and, in some re- 
spects, a very impressive letter, criticising Professor 
Sumner's recent article on " Socialism," published in 
this Magazine. We make space for a paragraph. 

u He (Professor Sumner) is evidently more a student of politi- 
cal economy than of moral economy ; for he seems to believe in 
those economic laws which offer their rewards to the sharp, rather 
than the moral man. The present economic laws are based upon 
free competition. Here the intellectual, subtile man has greatly 
the advantage. Right is determined by might in this as much as 
in the savage state, only here it is intellectual rather than physical 
might which controls." 

The writer goes on to say that this kind of civilization 
is s * only a step out of the merely natural brutal in- 
stincts," that men are mostly made and their lives di- 
rected by circumstances, and then he gives the familiar 



Certain Virtues and Virtuous Habits. 153 

proposition that " one-tenth of the population of England 
die paupers in order that another tenth may live in lux- 
ury and die millionaires." 

No account is taken in what we have quoted, and no 
account is taken in the letter, of the pruderitial element 
in human life and human society. This is the more re- 
markable because our correspondent assumes the role 
of morality with which that element is indissolubly asso- 
ciated. It is not true that the great victories of life are 
to the sharp and immoral man, as a rule. Here and 
there, by sharpness and cunning, men rise into wealth, 
but that wealth is not of a kind that is apt to remain. // 
takes a certain a?notmt of virtue, of self-de?iial, of moral- 
ity, to lay up and keep money. In the lives of nearly all 
rich men there have been periods of heroic self-denial, 
of patient industry, of Christian prudence. Circum- 
stances did not make these men rich. The highest 
moral prudence made them rich. While their compan- 
ions were dancing away their youth, or drinking away 
their middle age, these men were devoted to small econ- 
omies — putting self-indulgence entirely aside. 

If our correspondent or our readers will recall their 
companions, we think the first fact they will be im- 
pressed with is the measure of equality with which they 
started in the race for competence or wealth. The next 
fact they will be impressed with is the irregularity of the 
end. Then, if they make an inquisition into the causes 
of the widely varying results, they will be profoundly 
impressed with the insignificant part "circumstances" 
have played in those results. Circumstances ? Why 
the rich man's son who had all the " circumstances " of 
the town has become a beggar. The poor, quiet lad, 
the only son of his mother — and she a widow, who could 
only earn money enough to procure for her boy the 
commonest education — is a man of wealth and has be- 

7* 



1 54 Every-Day Topics. 

come a patron of his native village. The man who pos- 
sesses and practises virtue, makes his own circum- 
stances. The self-denying, prudent man creates around 
himself an atmosphere of safety where wealth naturally 
takes refuge, provided, of course, that the man has the 
power to earn it, either in production, or exchange, or 
any kind of manual or intellectual service. 

We are sorry that our correspondent, who seems intel- 
ligent in some things, should betray the ignorance or lack 
of reflection that appears in his proposition relating to 
the English paupers and millionnaires. Nothing could be 
more grossly and abominably untrue than the statement 
that " one- tenth of the population of England die pau- 
pers in order that another tenth may live in luxury and 
die millionaires. " There is not between the poverty of 
one class and the wealth of the other the slightest rela- 
tion of effect to cause. If the poor people of England had 
taken for the last few centuries the gold that wealth has 
paid to them for work in honest wages, and used it only 
in legitimate expenses, if they had not debauched them- 
selves with drink, spending not only their money but their 
life and their power to work upon a consuming appetite, 
the pauper class would be too insignificant to talk about. 
It is not " circumstances" that reduces the British work- 
man to pauperism ; it is beer, or gin. The waste that 
goes on in England, through the consumption of alco- 
holic drinks, is the cause of its pauperism. 

The case, prima facie, is always against a pauper. 
The accidents of life sometimes cast a man or a woman 
high and dry upon the sands of a helpless poverty ; but 
usually pauperism comes through a lack of the pruden- 
tial virtues. It is not always that a pauper wastes his 
revenues in drink, or other immoralities ; but somewhere 
in his career, forty-nine times in fifty, it will be found 
that he has been extravagant ; that he has not exercised 



Certain Virtues and Virtuous Habits, 155 

self-denial under temptation ; that he has lived up to or 
beyond his means, or has ventured upon risks that the 
lowest grade of business prudence would condemn. 
Now, who is to bear the penalty of these sins and mis- 
takes ? How are they to be prevented in future, if those 
who commit them, regardless of consequences, are to 
be coddled and taken care of by those who have denied 
themselves and laid up a little wealth ? 

Good, rugged, grand old Thomas Carlyle ! It is re- 
freshing to read amid the mawkish sentimentality of this 
latter day such a healthy utterance as this from his 
sturdy pen: " Let wastefulness, idleness, improvidence 
take the fate which God has appointed them, that their 
opposites may also have a chance for their fate.' 7 As it 
is, our philanthropists try to make us believe that, the 
special business of a thrifty man is not in any way to 
enjoy the fruit of his prudence and enterprise, but to 
shield the shiftless people around him from the results 
of their own imprudence and improvidence. 



EDUCATION AND INDUSTRY. 

The Ornamental Branches. 

MR. HERBERT SPENCER'S views of education, as 
contained in his book on that subject, now for some 
years before the public, ought by this time to have made 
some impression, and worked out some practical result. 
We fear, however, that it has accomplished little beyond 
giving to a wise man or woman, here or there, a shock- 
ing glimpse into the hollowness of our time-honored 
educational systems. It is equally amusing and humiliat- 
ing to those of us who live in this boasted civilization 
of the nineteenth century to see this philosopher pick 
our systems in pieces, and show how they are founded 
on the instincts of savagery. Decoration of the body 
precedes dress, and dress is developed out of the desire 
to be admired. In all savage life the idea of ornament 
predominates over that of use, and Mr. Spencer says 
that we who are civilized think more of the fineness of a 
fabric than its warmth, and more about the cut than the 
convenience. 

He then goes on to say that like relations hold with 
the mind. Here also the ornamental comes before the 
useful. That knowledge which conduces to personal 
well-being has been postponed to that which brings ap- 
plause, especially in the case of women. So far as wom- 
en are concerned, all this goes without saying, but Mr. 
Spencer goes farther than this, and asserts that in the 



Education and Industry. 157 

education of men the rule holds in only a less remark- 
able degree. Here we can do no better than to quote 
his own words, which are enough to make the blood of a 
college president run cold : 

11 We are guilty of something like a platitude when we say that 
throughout his after career, a boy, nine cases out of ten, applies 
his Latin and Greek to no practical purpose. The remark is trite 
that in his shop or his office, or managing his estate or his family, 
or playing his part as director of a bank or a railway, he is very 
little aided by this knowledge he took so many years to acquire — 
so little that, generally, the greater part of it drops out of his mem- 
ory ; and if he occasionally vents a Latin quotation, or alludes 
to some Greek myth, it is less to throw light upon the topic in 
hand than for the sake of effect. If we inquire what is the real 
motive for giving boys a classical education, we find it to be simply 
conformity to public opinion. Men dress their children's minds as 
they do their bodies, in the prevailing fashion. As the Orinoco 
Indian puts on his paint before leaving his hut, not with a view to 
any direct benefit, but because he would be ashamed to be seen 
without it, so a boy's drilling in Latin and Greek is insisted on, 
not because of their intrinsic value, but that he may not be dis- 
graced by being found ignorant of them — that he may have ' the 
education of a gentleman ' — the badge marking a certain social 
position, and bringing a consequent respect." 

Now, if a smaller man than Mr. Spencer had said 
this, his words might be passed by as of no moment 
whatever, but they are spoken deliberately by one of the 
masters of the age. We are told distinctly that the study 
of Latin and Greek is almost purely for ornamental 
purposes, that these languages are of no practical use in 
any of the ordinary affairs of life, and that when they are 
used it is chiefly for show. He has not a word to say of 
their disciplinary effect upon the mind, of their usefulness 
in exhibiting the sources of modern language, of their 
being the repositories and vehicles of ancient valuable 
literatures. No ; it is all for ornament. Latin and Greek 



158 Every -Day Topics. 

are ornamental branches, and to these the best years of 
the life of our youth are given. If the stock arguments 
in favor of these studies were offered, it would be quite 
in order for him, or any one, to answer that the discipli- 
nary effect of the study of German and French — not to 
speak of the English which it is the fashion to neglect 
altogether — can hardly be less than that of Greek and 
Latin ; and that the ancient literatures exist in transla- 
tions easily read by all who find either knowledge or 
nutriment in them. Is it true — this which Mr. Spencer 
so deliberately asserts ? Is it true that the precious 
years of tens of thousands of young men are thus thrown 
away ? — for that is the amount of his assertion. Is it 
true that fathers and guardians are spending their money 
for naught ? — that widowed mothers are pinching them- 
selves that their sons may acquire useless knowledge ? — 
that homes are left by thousands of young men when 
homes would be of incalculable use to them for nothing 
but the acquisition of knowledge without value ? Is all 
this half true ? 

We very strongly suspect that Mr. Spencer is right, 
or at least half right, and that the whole civilized world, 
among the highest forces of its civilization, is squander- 
ing the best years of its young men — sacrificing them to 
a fashion. It ought not to be difficult at this day to es- 
tablish a curriculum of liberal study which should em- 
brace mainly useful knowledge. The realm of science 
has been so greatly enlarged, and the relations of science 
to life have been so widely discovered and recorded ; 
the importance of a familiar knowledge of German and 
French is so great now, that original scientific researches 
are largely published in those languages, and the inter- 
course of the most advanced nations is so constantly in- 
creasing, that it would seem as if Latin and Greek must, 
perforce, be pushed out by the common sense of the 



Education and Industry. 159 

people and the conscious lack of time for the study of 
them. 

We have in these days a great deal of crowding of 
young men. To fit for college now is to do almost what 
many of our fathers did to get through college. The 
greatest care of health has to be taken to keep from 
breaking the boys down. They practise physical exer- 
cise, and we study dietetics for them, and manage, in 
all the wise ways we know, to keep the poor fellows up 
to their work, and yet, with every sort of "ponying" 
and cramming, it is all they can do to get through. And 
when they get. through, what have they on hand or mind 
that compensates them for their tremendous expendi- 
ture? As Mr. Spencer elsewhere says, in this same 
book, most things that a boy learns which are of any 
real use to him he learns after leaving college. The 
truth is, that all this crowding to which the boys are 
now subjected results from the attempt to add to the old 
curriculum from the ever-growing repertory of " knowl- 
edge." When, some years ago, the talk of " relieving 
Broadway" was the fashion, the stage-drivers struck for 
higher wages, and every line of omnibuses was stopped. 
It was at once discovered that getting rid of the omni- 
buses "relieved" Broadway, and that without them it 
would be a very pleasant street. Indeed, if the relief 
had been long enough continued, it is quite probable 
there would have been a movement made to prevent 
their return. Greek and Latin have only to be removed 
from the principal street through which our educational 
processes pass to relieve it, and make it one in which 
our children can walk with freedom and delight. 

This may be deemed somew r hat sweeping doctrine, 
but we are in good company, and are quite content with 
our backing. That something should be known of 
Latin and Greek — enough to aid us in understanding the 



160 Every -Day Topics. 

form and meaning of scientific nomenclature — is evident 
enough ; but that every liberally educated man should 
be made to know enough of those languages to teach 
them is absurd and cruel. We rejoice in the scientific 
schools, and the scientific " courses of study" connected 
with academic institutions. They mark the beginning 
of a better system of things, and, in the long run, they 
will confer such superior advantages upon young men in 
preparing for the practical work of life that they will 
absorb most of the students, or compel classical studies 
to take a lower and subordinate place in the average col- 
lege curriculum. But it is not a pleasant thing to reflect 
upon that, with boys as with girls, time and effort are 
mainly spent upon " the ornamental branches" of edu- 
cation. We are accustomed to having girls spend years 
upon the acquirement of arts of music and drawing that 
are never practised, and upon French that is never 
spoken, and that could not be understood if it were ; but 
when we are told by the highest authorities that the 
Latin and Greek which our boys spend all their youth 
upon are of no use, it is rather discouraging, and we 
begin to wish that our universities would take counsel 
of common sense rather than of fashion and precedent, 
so that we may spend money and life no more for that 
which is not bread. 

Fitting for College. 
The difficulty that some young men have in the 
endeavor to enter the colleges of their choice, makes 
desirable a public discussion of the matter, that both 
parents and young men may have a more intelligent 
comprehension of just what they have to do. A boy, 
we will say, attends a private school in New York. The 
school is near the boy's home, the teacher is all that is 
desirable in character and acquirements ; one of his 



Education and Industry. 161 

special functions is to fit young men for college, and so 
the boy is kept there, much to the comfort of his pa- 
rents, who like, as long as possible, to keep their chil- 
dren near them. 

Now, it should be understood that a boy, attempting to 
fit for college in this way, works at an immense disad- 
vantage. In the first place, where so many boys are 
brought together in a miscellaneous way, they will be 
found to have varying predilections for the different 
colleges. One wishes to fit for Harvard, one for Yale, 
one for Columbia, one for Princeton, one for Amherst, 
and so on. Now, these colleges have widely differing 
standards in a general way, and widely differing re- 
quirements in particulars. There is necessity for classi- 
fication in the economy of labor ; and so these boys, who 
are fitting for various colleges, are put together. Now, 
while one of them may be fitted for one college, he may 
not be at all fitted for another, or not fitted in some 
essential particulars. One of them enters the college of 
his choice without difficulty, and all the rest, perhaps, 
are conditioned, or fail entirely, and they, with their 
parents, are subjected to a great disappointment and a 
great mortification from which they never entirely re- 
cover. 

Again, an ordinary private school in the city is attended 
by a large number who do not intend to fit for college at 
all. They are the sons, perhaps, of business men, who 
intend to make business men of them. Probably the 
majority k of the boys in the larger and smaller private 
academies of the city have no view to a college training, 
though some of them may be getting ready to go away to 
some special preparatory school. At any rate, the 
schools have no drift in the direction of the college. 
There is no unity of aim, no class spirit, no emulation 
among a large body of boys who are running along a 



1 62 Every-Day Topics. 

common track toward a common goal. The schools are 
lakes of educational and social eddies. They are not 
streams that drive on toward a single debouchure into 
the sea. Now, no man who understands the nature of a 
boy can fail to see that in institutions like these, he 
works at a very great disadvantage. Class life has a 
wonderful influence on a boy. It is in this life that he 
not only learns to measure himself, but he is immensely 
stimulated by sympathy and society. The school that 
has a common drift and aim, common plans, common 
topics of conversation, common text-books, and knows 
exactly what it is trying to do, and what it must do, is 
that in which any boy will do best. 

The disappointments which come in such numbers to 
parents and boys every year, grow mainly out of the fact 
that the boys have not had a fair chance. They have 
been kept in schools where they have always studied at 
a disadvantage. It may not be that they have lacked at 
all in faithful study, but it has all been up-hill, with in- 
fluences around them that have never helped, but always 
hindered them. 

We have now, scattered about in different parts of the 
country, eminent preparatory schools, officered and ap- 
pointed for their special work. They have some, per- 
haps many, students in them who are not fitting for the 
college, but the controlling influences all tend toward 
the college. Nearly every one of these institutions has 
a special affiliation with a college, and it is understood 
that the most of those who attend any particular one of 
them will go to a certain college. There are schools 
that fit for Harvard. There are those that fit for Yale, 
or Princeton, or Cornell, or Columbia. There was prob- 
ably never a time when these schools were as good as 
they are to-day. Some of them have the reputation 
even of fitting too well, so that a student who enters 



Education and Industry. 163 

college from them finds himself with so little to do 
during the first year that he loses his industry, and is 
surpassed in the long run by those who simply get in, 
and are obliged to work hard during the first year to 
keep in. 

Any school of miscellaneous and multitudinous aims 
is a bad school for special work, no matter what the 
work may be. Any school whose social influences can- 
not be harnessed in with the educational and guided 
toward a common object, and that object the college, 
cannot be the best in which to fit a boy for college. So 
let the boys have a fair chance. If they cannot find the 
preparatory school they need in the city, they must go 
to the country — go somewhere, at least, to a school 
whose function it is to do the special work desired. If 
this rule were strictly followed, the great army of the 
mismanaged and the plucked, every year turned away 
from our universities, would be very much reduced. 

College Instruction. 
One would suppose that, after the discussions of edu- 
cational processes with which the platform and the press 
have teemed during the last two decades, professional 
educators would be thoroughly furnished with sound 
ideas and excellent methods. At least, the college, 
which assumes the highest place among educational in- 
stitutions, should present a system of instruction above 
reproach ; yet it seems to us that the college is particu- 
larly lame in its methods, and unsatisfactory in its re- 
sults. Nothing, for instance, can be more mechanical 
and unsatisfactory than the system of marking, as it is 
pursued, say, during the first year of college life. In 
the first place, the class is put almost entirely in the 
hands of young and comparatively inexperienced in- 
structors. At a time when the pupil needs direction 



1 64 Every-Day Topics. 

and inspiration, if he ever does, he is left almost entirely 
to himself, or to those whose experiences of life are so 
limited that they are not accepted as directors, and 
whose lack of character framed upon experience forbids 
the exercise of influence. The average tutor is very 
rarely an instructor. The pupil's business is to acquire 
from books the power to answer questions, and the 
tutor's business is to ask the questions and mark the re- 
sults to the pupil in his answers. Automata could prob- 
ably be built to do the work of the tutor, in all essential 
particulars, and in such a case the result to the pupil 
would be much the same that it is now — a wretched 
grind, in which the chief interest attaches rather to the 
marks than to the studies. 

Now, if the power to answer questions is the chief end 
of man, or the chief end of education, if marks can be 
made, or are ever used, to measure manhood, or power 
to reason or to do, the present system is much nearer 
right than we suppose it to be. But the truth is that 
marks tell nothing about a student, except about his 
power to acquire from a book, and his power to recite 
glibly what he has acquired. For it must be remem- 
bered that many a young man has not the power to re- 
cite in a class-room, in the presence of his mates, what 
he has faithfully learned, and is thus made to suffer in 
his marks, and, consequently, in his standing, for a fault 
of temperament for which he is not responsible. The 
matter of teaching is, as a rule, left out of the tutor's 
functions. His business is to hear recitations, in studies 
in which he gives neither direction nor assistance. He 
is a marker ; that is his special business. If "no boy 
ever loved the man who taught him Latin," whose fault 
would it be likely to be ? The truth is that when the 
tasks of college are irksome and hateful it is the teacher's 
fault, as a rule ; for it is within the power of any com- 



Education and Industry. 165 

petent teacher to make any study delightful. When 
students are properly introduced to an author, or a 
study, and are really directed or led by a sympathetic 
and competent mind, they are happy in their work, and 
it is the universal testimony of students that the young 
tutor is the hard man of the college. They much prefer 
to be in the hands of the older men. They are treated 
more like men by the older teachers, and less like ma- 
chines. They prefer to be in the hands of men who 
seem interested to find out what they know, and careless 
to learn what they don't know, and to trip them upon 
opportunity. 

It seems to us that a great deal too much of college 
work is put upon young men, who may be very acute 
and very learned, but not very wise ; and that the sys- 
tem of marking, as at present pursued, is very poorly 
calculated to nourish the self-respect of the young men 
subjected to it. It also forces into prominence a motive 
of study which is anything but the best. The great 
business of the student is, not to acquire knowledge and 
discipline and power, but to get marks. This motive is 
absolutely forced upon him, and it is a mean and child- 
ish one, and he knows and feels it, too, very much at 
the expense of his self-respect. His standing in his class, 
the reports of his position to his parents, even his power 
to stay in the college at all, depend upon his marks. 
Marks are the ghosts that haunt him by night, and the 
phantoms that track him by day. Now he knows, and 
everybody knows, that men cannot be ticketed off justly 
in this way, and he may know that he is ten times the 
man that another student is who may win better marks, 
through his facility in committing to memory, and re- 
citing off-hand. We have said that the motive forced 
upon him is a childish one. We know many students 
who feel this keenly, and who believe with us that if 



1 66 Every -Day Topics. 

students were treated more like men by professors inter- 
ested in them and in their progress, any apparent need 
for treating them like children, that may at present exist, 
would pass away. 

We have said, also, that the student's power to stay in 
college at all depends upon his marks. This is the most 
astounding thing connected with this whole matter. The 
only remedy that seems to have been devised for the 
treatment of a slow student, by these great public edu- 
cational institutions whose real business is to educate 
him, is to drop him ; and to drop him is, nine times in 
ten, to discourage him and ruin him. Can anything 
more lame and impotent in the way of a conclusion be 
imagined ? The result is absolutely rascally and crim- 
inal. It is a natural outcome, however, of the mechani- 
cal system which we regard as essentially vicious. The 
college seems to be regarded by its faculty as a great 
mill, into which the boys are turned as a grist. Every- 
thing that will not go through the hopper is thrown away/ 
no matter what personal powers and aspirations, or 
what family hopes may go with it. 

Of course we understand the conveniences of the 
marking system. It throws the responsibility of the 
student's progress upon himself, and entirely relieves the 
faculty. That is a very great convenience — to the 
faculty — but, as the college is paid for educating him, it 
is hardly fair to the student himself, or his family. Then 
it is so much easier to judge a man by his power to re- 
cite a lesson, than it is by his power to solve an intellec- 
tual problem, or to do an intellectual piece of work of 
any kind ! Then, still again, it is a kind of work that 
can be trusted to young men, who have just gone through 
the process and are accustomed to the machinery — in- 
deed, are products of it ! 

Gentlemen of the college, is there not some better 



Education and Industry. 167 

way — a way that will make more and harder work for 
you, perhaps, but a way that will more thoroughly nour- 
ish the sense of manhood among your students, and give 
them a nobler motive for work than that which you force 
them to regard as the principal motive — a nobler motive 
which will make study a joy, and invest them with a 
feeling of dignity and a sentiment of self-respect ? To 
treat students like gentlemen, and less like children or 
machines, and to come more into contact with them as 
guides and teachers, and less as task-masters, would, in 
our opinion, make better students out of them and ex- 
ceedingly better men. We cannot doubt, we may say, 
in closing, that too much college work is given to young 
men to do. Their work is drudgery, perhaps, which the 
older men would gladly escape, but no work done in 
college should be drudgery, if pursued with the right 
spirit and policy, and with adequate intelligence. 

Teachers and Task-Masters. 

We are sorry for the man who did not have, at some 
period of his childhood or youth, one teacher who filled 
him with the enthusiasm of study, and brought him into 
love with knowledge and into a genuine delight in the 
use of his intellectual powers ; one teacher — to state it 
briefly — who understood his business. For, with all the 
advances made in the theories and methods of educa- 
tion, and all the elevation of educational standards, it 
is, and remains, true, that the poorest work done in the 
world is done in the school-room. 

In the first place, there is no competent idea of what 
education really is, in the average teacher's mind. His 
whole training has misled him, and his own instincts and 
common sense have in no way corrected his educational 
influences. His work has been the careful and indus- 
trious memorizing of the materials of his text-books, and 



1 68 Every- Day Topics. 

he has no idea of educating others except by the sam& 
process. He has never been taught ; he has simply 
been tasked. He is, consequently, a dry man, without 
enthusiasm and without ideas ; and the work that he 
does is simply that of a task-master. A preacher, in 
order to succeed, must not only be an enthusiast, but 
he must be profoundly interested in the kind of material 
that comes to his hand to be molded and influenced, 
and in the processes through which he acts upon it. He 
exercises all the ingenuities of address and handling, to 
win attention, and is never satisfied until he has awak- 
ened a profound interest in the topics that engage his 
efforts. Every live preacher has his own way of work, 
and accounts it a misfortune to find himself lapsing 
into the mere mechanisms of his profession. So unlike 
him is the average teacher, that a pupil is always sur- 
prised to find him an interesting person, who gets out- 
side of his mechanical routine of duty. A teacher's 
duty, as it is commonly understood, is to keep order and 
hear recitations. Beyond this, he is to mark progress 
in education, as he most incompetently understands it, 
by arithmetical formulae. Nothing more uninteresting 
and mechanical can be imagined than the usual routine 
of school. 

Parents often wonder why their children are not inter- 
ested in their studies. Why ! in the way in which their 
studies are conducted, it is quite impossible that they 
should be interested. The marvel is that they have suf- 
ficient interest in their tasks to pursue them at all. 
Machine education is no more interesting than machine 
preaching. It is simply a long, dry grind, which chil- 
dren are glad to get through with, and upon which they 
look back with anything but pleasure and satisfaction. 

The ordinary teacher will naturally inquire what we 
would have. It is very hard to tell an incompetent man 



Education and Industry. i6g 

what he cannot himself see, of the requirements of his 
own calling ; but we have a very definite idea of what 
we desire, and of what we believe to be needed. In the 
first place, no pupil should ever undertake a study to 
which he has not been properly and competently intro- 
duced. The nature of the study, its relations to all other 
study and to life, the proper methods of pursuing it, the 
literature connected with it — all these should be presented 
and explained in such a way that a pupil on beginning has 
some idea of what he is undertaking, and the reasons 
for his undertaking it. Then, from this time, the edu- 
cator is" to remember that he is less a task-master than a 
teacher, and that if his pupils do not get along well, it is 
mainly his fault. If they have been properly presented 
to the study, and their way into it has been made inter- 
esting by his intelligent and enthusiastic leading, they 
will be interested ; otherwise, not. We have known 
pupils to go through years of study in the mathematics 
without understanding anything as they ought to do, 
and, at last, to bring their study to a most fruitless and 
unsatisfactory termination, simply because they had a 
teacher who regarded himself as only a task-master, and 
would never take the time and pains to teach them and 
make the steps of their progress plain. No man is fit 
to teach who will leave a pupil floundering in and 
through a study for the want of intelligent help and di- 
rection. It is a teacher's business to teach, and not to 
leave his. pupils to find out what they can themselves, 
and hold them responsible for their own instruction. 
Education is not the result of memorizing facts, nor 
wholly of understanding and arranging them, of course ; 
but so long as w r e study text-books, and practically re- 
cord our progress by means of them, there is no such 
inspirer as an intelligent, sympathetic and enthusiastic 
teacher. 

8 



i 
170 Every -Day Topics. 

The public have not held teachers to their true re- 
sponsibility. We send a young lad or a young girl to 
school, and find that, while we are paying out a great 
deal of money for them, they are gaining nothing. We 
complain, and are informed that our children are not in- 
dustrious, that they do not seem interested in their 
studies, that they are absorbed in play, etc., etc. In 
ninety-nine cases in a hundred, our disappointment is 
entirely the fault of the teacher. He or she is simply 
incompetent for the duty they have undertaken. A first- 
class teacher always has good pupils. Lack of interest 
in study is always the result of poor teaching. We send 
a boy to college, and find that he regards his studies as 
a grind — that he is only interested in getting good 
marks, and that he is getting no scholarly tastes, and 
winning no scholarly delights. We inquire, and find 
him in the hands of a young tutor, without experience, 
who really pretends to be no more than a task-master, 
and who knows nothing, and seems to care nothing, 
about the office of teaching. The placing of large 
masses of young men in the hands of inexperienced per- 
sons, who do not pretend to do more than to set tasks 
and record the manner in which they are performed, 
without guidance or assistance, is a gross imposition of 
the college upon a trusting public, and it is high time 
that an outcry so determined and persistent is raised 
against it that it shall procure a reform. 

College Trustees and Professors. 
We suppose there are few successful professional and 
literary men who do not receive many letters from the 
young, asking for their advice on matters relating to a 
career. There is a sense of ignorance and a yearning 
for direction among large masses of bright and ambi- 
tious young men, that seek for satisfaction in a great 



Education and Industry. 171 

variety of ways. Now, there is no influence that goes 
so far with these as an example. They are peculiarly 
inspired by a great practical life, which wins, or drives 
its way successfully through the world ; and the call for 
prescriptive advice is simply a declaration of the ab- 
sence of inspiring example within the immediate vision 
of the applicants. It is as natural for a young man to 
look for a model, and to put himself under the influence 
of an inspiring personality, as it is to breathe ; and 
when and where this inspiration is wanting, we shall 
always find young men seeking for counsel. 

In view of what seem to be the facts of the case, we 
are compelled to believe that this matter is made small 
account of in the appointment of college officers. To 
begin with the trustees: we would like to inquire what 
motives usually prevail in determining their election. 
It happens that there are, here and there, boards of 
trustees at the head of our literary institutions, made up 
of men who are really inspiring powers upon the stu- 
dents and professors alike ; and it is notorious that there 
are others, and perhaps, the majority, who are held by 
both in contempt. They are ignorant, incapable of good 
except as they may be led by the faculties under them, 
niggardly, short-sighted, conservative, illiberal, and with 
no more apprehension of the high duties of their office 
and the march of improvement, and the growing necessi- 
ties and requirements of the times, than they would be 
if they were made of wood and iron. A board of trus- 
tees of this stamp is, of course, a clog upon any institu- 
tion. How many boards like this, held either in good- 
natured or ill-natured contempt by the professors and 
students under them, have we in the country ? We fear 
that there are a great many, made up of men v/ho have 
been placed in trust because they have influence in the 
financial world — because they have money and need to 



172 Every -Day Topics, 

be flattered into leaving endowments — because they have 
intrigued for the eminence which has been bestowed 
upon them — because they have shown themselves wise 
in scheming for themselves in fields that have no alliance 
with learning. 

Now, the college trustee ought to be a man, not only 
of learning, but of an eminence that grows, and can only 
grow, out of learning, or in association with it — a man 
who knows the needs of a college not only because he 
has been through it, but because he knows the world, 
takes the measure of his time, sees the drift of progress, 
apprehends opportunities. He should be a man whose 
presence is an inspiration — a man whose life, blossoming 
with culture and crowned with success, is a stimulant 
and a tonic upon all the college life, alike of professors 
and students. The difference in the influence of a board 
of trustees, made up of men of whom such a man is the 
type, and one made up of the ordinary trustee material, 
is so great that the observing outsider can only wonder 
that the prevalent absurdity can live for a year. We 
should like to know how many boards of faculty are at 
this moment making all their progress in spite of stupid 
trustees, who lie back in their breeching like mules flap- 
ping their hybrid ears in protest ! 

Something was said in the editorial pages of this 
magazine last month on the need of literary men as 
professors of literature in our colleges. The article of 
Professor Beers upon Yale, which appeared in Scrib?ier 
some months ago, recognized the literary bent of the 
Cambridge students as a somewhat distinctive charac- 
teristic of Harvard, though he attributed it to another 
cause than the influence of Lowell and Longfellow. A 
recent editorial in the New York Times took strong 
ground in favor of literary men in literary professorships. 

But there is a wider view to take of this whole subject. 



Education and Industry, 173 

The college professor, as a rule, is bound up in his 
specialty. He has but one side to him, and that is 
always turned toward the college. He has no side 
turned toward the world. He teaches within the walls 
what he has learned, and betrays no fructification of 
thought and life in production. He gets into his rut, 
which grows deeper and deeper with the passing years 
until, at last, his head sinks below the surface, and he 
loses sight of the world and the world of him. Now, the 
difference in their influence upon a student, between 
such a man as this and one who writes successfully — or 
preaches successfully — or speaks successfully — or inves- 
tigates successfully in new fields, must be, in the nature 
of things, very great. To the professor who has met the 
world's life in any way, and won a place in the world's 
thought and regard, and become an outside power and 
influence, the student turns as naturally for instruction 
and inspiration as a flower turns toward the sun. Even 
a single professor in an academic institution, who shows 
by attractive production that his learning has really fruc- 
tified his mind, will have more influence in determining 
the college life, and that which goes out from it, than all 
the rest of the faculty put together. The students know 
that they are to meet and, if possible, to master life. 
There is not a bright one among them who does not 
know that his learning will avail him little if it does not 
give him practical power ; so that every exhibition of 
that power among those who teach him leads and in- 
spires him. 

Suppose such a man as George William Curtis were 
at the head of a college department — a man ready and 
graceful in speech, acute in politics, facile and accom- 
plished in all literary expression, familiar with history, 
courteous and happy in social intercourse — what w r ould 
be the effect upon the students under him, compared 



174 Every -Day Topics. 

with that of a professor who only knows the duties of his 
chair, and who is but a helpless baby outside of it ? To 
ask the question is to answer it, and cover our whole 
argument. The culture and drift of the college would 
be toward him, not at all because he would be a teacher, 
but because he would be an inspirer. Take such a man 
as Julius Seelye, who has just been elected to the presi- 
dency of Amherst — a man who is a recognized power in 
the pulpit — who presents the argument for Christianity 
to the wise men of India — who demonstrates the fact 
that, although he is a teacher and a preacher, he is quite 
capable of statesmanship in the halls of national legis- 
lation, and compare his influence upon a body of stu- 
dents with that of the average college president. 

The simple truth is, that there is nothing which our 
colleges need more than men of public power and influ- 
ence — men who can not only teach their specialties, but, 
by their life and example, point the way to usefulness, 
and influence upon the world — men who have a side for 
•the world as well as for the college, and who, by their 
knowledge of the world, and the practical ways of reach- 
ing it and acting upon it, are able to guide and inspire 
as well as to instruct and enrich. 

An Aspect of the Labor Question. 
There is probably no country in which heredity has 
played so unimportant a part in the national employ- 
ment as it has in America. No true American child 
thinks the better of a calling from the fact that his father 
has followed it. In European countries, especially upon 
the continent, men inherit the trades and callings of 
their fathers. Here, they are quite apt to despise them 
and to leave them. Our farmers' boys and the sons of 
our blacksmiths and carpenters all try for something 
higher— for an employment that may be considered 



Education and Industry. 175 

more genteel. This is the result of certain ideas that 
were early put afloat in the American mind, and have 
been sedulously cultivated — in the newspapers, in books 
prepared for the young, and in the public schools. Every 
boy has been told more than once — indeed, most boys 
have had it drilled into them — that the Presidency of the 
United States is within their reach ; that it is a part of 
their business to raise themselves and better themselves ; 
especially, to raise themselves above the condition to 
which they were born. Somehow or other, in the nur- 
ture of these ideas there have been developed certain 
opinions, with relation to the different callings of life, 
as regards gentility, respectability, and desirableness 
for social reasons. The drift of the American mind has 
been away from all those employments which involve 
hard manual labor. The farm is not popular with the 
American young man. The idea of learning a useful 
trade is not a popular one with the typical American 
lad, or even with his parents. If he get a liberal educa- 
tion, he must become a professional man. If he get a 
tolerable education, he must become a semi-professional 
— a dentist perhaps, or the follower of some genteel em- 
ployment of that sort. He drifts away from his farm 
into some of the centres of trade and manufactures ; he 
becomes a clerk in a store, or a teacher of a school, or a 
practiser of some art that relieves him from the drudgery 
of the farm and has an air of greater respectability. 

The young man's sisters are affected by the same 
ideas. Housework, to them, is low work, menial work. 
It is not respectable. They go into factories, they be- 
come what are denominated " sales-ladies. " Even the 
poor people who have hard work to keep body and soul 
together are affected by these same notions. We know 
of families where the daughters are not taught to sew, 
where they are instructed in none of the more useful arts, 



1/6 Every -Day Topics. 

and where they aspire to raise themselves to professions 
of various sorts, to anything but manual work. The 
consequence is that in days of business depression, when 
labor is hard to procure, and those who have money are 
obliged to cut off some part of their luxuries, these peo- 
ple are stranded in gentility and their genteel notions, 
and are the most helpless part of our population. They 
can do nothing useful, and are absolutely cut off from 
all sources of revenue. Some of the most pitiful cases 
we have met during the past five years have been cases 
of this character. One lady tells us : " My girls are 
as good as anybody's girls ! " — a statement which we 
deny, because they are not able to make their own 
dresses or cook their own food. And the fact that her 
girls are as good as anybody's girls is regarded as a mat- 
ter of pride, when they are as helpless as babes, and 
when they are actually ashamed to undertake any useful 
work whatever, unless that work happen to square with 
their notions of gentility. 

We feel that this is all a mistake. Heaven forbid that 
we should suppress any man's or any woman's aspirations 
after excellence or after improvement of personal posi- 
tion. We understand all this, and sympathize with it 
all. But it is not possible that the whole American peo- 
ple can rise out of ordinary, useful labor, into high posi- 
tion. It is not possible that every lad who goes to a dis- 
trict school can become President of the United States. 
These useful employments on the farm and in the shop 
of the mechanic lie at the basis of all our national pros- 
perity. This work must be done, and somebody must 
do it — and those who are best adapted to it must do it. 
No greater wrong can be done to a lad than to lift him 
from the employment to which he is best adapted into 
something which seems to him to be higher. In these 
days, the foreigner is the man, as a rule, who does the 



Education and Industry. 177 

work. In travelling over the country, if one loses a shoe 
from a horse, the chances are many that the blacksmith 
he will find at the wayside will be an Irishman. The old 
Yankee blacksmith has " gone out," as we say, and we 
are to-day dependent upon the person we import from 
Europe for the work that is necessary to carry on the 
farm, for the work that is necessary to carry on our man- 
ufactures, both in a large and in a small way, for the 
work of the kitchen, and for all the service of the house- 
hold. • . 

It is very hard for a man who has been bred an Ameri- 
can to conceive of such a thing as over-education for 
what are known as the common people. Yet there is 
something in the education of our common people, or 
something in the ideas which have been imbibed in the 
course of their education, which seems to unfit them for 
their work, which makes them discontented, which dis- 
turbs them, and makes it well-nigh impossible for them 
to accept the conditions of the lot into which they are 
born, and the employments which have been followed 
by their parents. It has become, indeed, a very serious 
matter, and deserves the profound attention of our edu- 
cators and political economists. If by any study or any 
chance we could learn the cause of these great changes 
and obviate it, it would be a boon to the American peo- 
ple. As it is to-day, the avenues to what are called gen- 
teel employments are choked with the crowds pushing 
into them from our public schools. Young men with 
good muscles and broad backs are standing behind shop- 
men's counters, who ought to be engaged in some more 
manly pursuits, who would have a better outlook before 
them and would have a better life and more self-respect, 
if they were doing a man's work behind a plough or be- 
hind a plane. There are women in large numbers striv- 
ing for genteel employments, who would be a thousand 



178 Every-Day Topics. 

times better in body and mind, if they were engaged in 
household work. There are men and women even in 
hard times, when they hardly know where their next 
meal is coming from, and have not the slightest idea 
how they are to procure their next new garment, who 
are still very difficult to please in the matter of work, and 
who will crowd their daughters into stores and shops, 
rather than apprentice them to dress-makers where they 
may learn a useful trade and earn increased wages. In 
the meantime, the more sensible foreigner is picking up 
industriously and carefully all the threads dropped in 
those industries which were once purely American, and 
the Americans pure and simple are becoming ruinously 
and absurdly genteel. 

Great Shopkeepers. 
There are certain advantages that come to the com- 
munity through the existence of great fortunes. There 
is no doubt that it is better for a man to hire a house of 
one who owns a hundred houses than to hire the only 
house a man owns. The Astors are good landlords, be- 
cause their money is all invested in houses. The rent- 
ing of houses is their business. Their estates are large 
— gigantic, in fact, and, so that they get a good tenant, 
and a constant one, they are content with a moderate 
percentage on their investment. They have money 
enough to keep their property in good repair, and they 
do not feel compelled to press a tenant to the highest 
possible price. There are certain advantages that come 
to the community and the country through such a for- 
tune as that of Commodore Vanderbilt, invested and 
managed as he invests and manages it. A man whose 
fortune lifts him above the temptation to steal, and who 
possesses large organizing and administrative capacities, 
may be a genuine public benefactor, in the handling of 



Education and Industry. 179 

great corporate interests. There is no question, we 
suppose, that the great railroad over which Commodore 
Vanderbilt has exercised control for the last decade, 
has been better managed for the country and the stock- 
holders than it ever was before. The road has been 
improved, it has been well run, it has accommodated 
the public, it has paid its employes, it has paid dividends, 
it has paid its interest. 

It is true, also, that there must be large accumulations 
of capital in private hands, in order that the people may 
get many of the necessaries of life cheaply. The book 
that a man buys for five dollars may, and often does, 
cost fifty thousand to prepare for the press. The shirt- 
ing that a laboring man wears can only be purchased 
cheaply because some man, or combination of men, 
have been willing to risk half a million or a million of 
dollars in the erection and appointment of a mill. The 
simple plated service of a mechanic's tea-table could 
only be produced at its price in an establishment costing 
immense sums of money, and employing large numbers 
of men, who are equally benefited with the purchasers 
of the ware produced. There are a thousand ways in 
which great capitalists are of daily benefit to the world. 

New York has just been called upon to bury its great 
shopkeeper. The name of A. T. Stewart was known 
throughout the world. He had amassed a colossal for- 
tune, he had lived a reputable life, he had done, and he 
was doing at the time of his decease, a larger business 
in his way than any other man in the world. We have 
no criticisms of the man to offer. He made his immense 
accumulations by what is called " legitimate trade ; " he 
did what he would with his own ; he left it as he chose to 
leave it. We share the common disappointment that he 
who seemed so competent to win money for his own 
benefit failed to dispose of it in such a way as to re- 



1 80 Every -Day Topics. 

dound to his everlasting renown. We are sorry for his 
own sake, and the city's sake, that he did not associate 
with his name some great gift to the public, which would 
embalm him in the affectionate memory of a people from 
whose purses he took the profits that made him super- 
fluously rich. It would have been a good thing for him 
to do, but he has lost his chance, and there is nothing to 
be said or done about it. 

This, however, may be said — and this is what we 
started to say — his business was one which he did not 
do, and could not do, without a depressing influence 
upon all who were dependent upon the same business 
for a livelihood. His great establishment was a shadow 
that hung over all the others in the town. The man 
with ten or twenty thousand dollars ; the man with a 
hundred thousand dollars ; the man with one thousand 
dollars, each, alike, was obliged to compete with this 
man, who had millions outside of the necessities of his 
enormous business. The hosier, the hatter, the woman 
in her thread-and-needle shop, the milliner, the glove- 
dealer, the carpet-dealer, the upholsterer, all were 
obliged to compete with Stewart. If he had followed a 
single line of business, it would have been different ; but 
he followed all lines. Wherever he saw a profit to be 
made, in any line of business that was at all congruous 
with dry-goods, he made it. He thus became a formi- 
dable competitor with half the shopkeepers in New 
York. His capital made it possible for him to ruin men 
by the turn of his hand — to fix prices at which every- 
body was obliged to sell at whatever loss. However 
proud the New Yorker may have been of his wonderful 
establishment — and there is no doubt that it was pretty 
universally regarded with pride — it is easy now to see 
that our business men at large would be in a much better 
condition if that establishment had never existed. If all 



Education and Industry. 181 

the money that has gone to swell his useless estate had 
been divided among small dealers, hundreds of stores, 
now idle, would be occupied, and multitudes of men 
now in straitened circumstances, would be comparatively 
prosperous. 

But it is said that he employed a great many people. 
Yes, he did ; but did he pay them well ? Would they 
not have been better paid in the employ of others. The 
necessities of his position, and his ambition, compelled 
him to pay small prices. The great mass of those who 
served him worked hard for the bread that fed them, and 
the clothes that covered them. The public bought 
cheaply ; the outside dealers suffered ; the employes 
laid up no money, and Mr. Stewart got rich. Under the 
circumstances, and under the necessities of the case, was 
it desirable that he should get rich ? We think not ; 
and we think that the final result of this great shop- 
keeping success is deplorable in every way. It has ab- 
sorbed the prosperities of a great multitude of men and 
women. New York would be richer, happier, more 
comfortable, more healthy in all its business aspects, if 
the great store at Tenth Street had never been built. 
Five hundred men who invest their little capital in the 
varied lines of business, and pay their modest rent, and 
devote their time to their affairs, content with profits that 
give them and their families a fair living and a few sav- 
ings for a rainy day, are certainly better for a city than 
a single Stewart, who absorbs their business and leaves 
them in distress. 

No, we want no more great shopkeepers. We trust 
we may never have another Stewart ; and we say this 
with all due respect to his memory and the marvellous 
skill with which he managed his affairs. Such fortunes 
as his, won in such a way, can never be accumulated 
without detriment to the general business of a city like 



1 82 Every -Day Topics. 

ours. They do nobody any good ; they do a great mul- 
titude of people an irremediable injury. 

Industrial Education. 
There are certain facts of current history which give 
great importance to the subject of industrial education. 
It is notorious, in the first place, that the old system of 
apprenticship has almost entirely gone into disuse. How 
the American artisan gets the knowledge and skill which 
enable him to work at a trade, is not obvious. In one 
way or another he manages to do it ; but the approach 
to a mechanical employment has practically ceased to 
be through an old-fashioned apprenticeship. Among 
the causes that have conspired to procure the abandon- 
ment of the old system, may first be mentioned the influ- 
ence of common schools. Quarrel with the fact as we 
may, it cannot be successfully denied that the influence 
of common schools has been to unfit those subjected to 
their processes and social influences for the common 
employments of life. The lad who has made a successful 
beginning of the cultivation of his intellect, does not 
like the idea of getting a living by the skilful use of his 
muscles, in a mechanical employment. It does not ac- 
count for everything to say that he gets above it. It is 
enough that he likes the line of intellectual development 
in which he finds himself, and has no taste for bodily 
labor. So he goes further, or stopping altogether, seeks 
some light employment demanding his grade of culture 
or tries to get his living by his wits. Mechanical em- 
ployments are passing more and more into the hands of 
foreigners. General Armstrong, of the colored college 
at Hampton, in a recent search for blacksmiths' shops 
at the North where he might safely place a number of 
Indian lads, found no Americans to deal with. Every 
blacksmith was an Irishman. 
/ 



Education and Industry. 183 

If it is asked why there is not a universal effort made 
for the reinstatement of the apprentice-systems, we re- 
ply that that there is a very ugly lion in the way. An 
item of news which has just gone the round of the papers 
states the case as it stands. A piano-maker complained 
that he could not get men enough to do his work, the 
reason being that his men belonged to a society that had 
taken upon itself to regulate the number of apprentices 
he could be permitted to instruct in the business. They 
had limited this number to one utterly insufficient to 
supply the demand, and he was powerless. They had 
even cut down the number, recently, so that there was 
no way for him but to import his workmen, already in- 
structed, from abroad. In brief, there is a conspiracy 
among society-men, all over the country, to keep 
American boys out of the useful trades ; and industrial 
education is thus under the ban of an outrageous despot- 
ism which ought to be put down by the strong hand of 
the law. It is thus seen that while the common school 
naturally turns the great multitude of its attendants away 
from manual employments, those who still feel inclined 
to enter upon them have no freedom to do so, because a 
great army of society-men stand firmly in the way, over- 
ruling employer and employed alike. 

Now, there are two points which we would like to 
present : 

1. The public school, as at present conducted, not only 
does not fit boys and girls for the work of taking care of 
themselves and their dependents , but absolutely hinders 
them from undertaking it, or engenders ideas that are 
impracticable or misleading. 

2. That the public has to pay in some way for all the 
ignorance of practical life in which the public school 
leaves its pupils. 

The pauperism that grows out of this ignorance is an 



1 84 Every- Day Topics. 

almost intolerable burden upon the public purse. The 
crime that attends it is so notable that all who are 
familiar with the subject know that a very large percen- 
tage of culprits and convicts never learned a trade. 
When a man of low moral sense and weak will finds that 
he knows no trade by which he can make a living, he be- 
comes a thief by a process as natural as breathing. Pau- 
perism and crime are, therefore, the inevitable result of 
ignorance in the way of taking care of one's self and 
earning one's living. The question of expense is one 
which an intelligent and enterprising public ought easily 
to settle. This ignorance is to cost money. Shall this 
money be paid for the purpose of removing the igno- 
rance, and obviating the necessity for pauperism and 
crime, or shall it be paid for the pauperism and crime ? 

We know, or appreciate, the practical difficulties that 
stand in the way of a system of industrial schools, sup- 
ported by public tax, but surely if it is needed — impera- 
tively needed — American ingenuity will be sufficient tp 
give it practical direction, and secure a satisfactory re- 
sult. . Our good neighbors in Boston have been trying to 
do something, more particularly for the girls. They 
have introduced not only plain sewing into their school, 
but the making of dresses and other garments. Only 
two hours of each week are devoted to the matter, and 
twenty-nine special teachers employed, but the results 
are most encouraging. Mrs. Jonathan Sturges and her 
associates in the Wilson Industrial School for Girls, of 
this city, more than a year ago appealed to the New 
York Board of Education on behalf of the project of in- 
troducing sewing into our public schools here, and 
backed their appeal by this quotation from a Boston re- 
port : u Every girl who passes through the Boston 
schools now receives three years' instruction in various 
kinds of needlework, and is capable of being an expert 



Education and Industry. 185 

seamstress. It is said the benefits resulting from this 
instruction are seen in the appearance of the children's 
clothing in the schools, and are felt in thousands of 
homes." Now, we ask our Board of Education if they 
have anything to show, in their reports of the last ten 
years, that is calculated to give a practical man or 
woman the pleasure and satisfaction to be found in such 
an announcement as this. Can they not see that what 
these girls in Boston have learned in this way, with a 
comparatively small expenditure of time and money, is 
of incalculable value ? What is a little less of algebra, 
or geography, or even of arithmetic, by the side of this 
surpassing gain ? 

Well, our Board reported against Mrs. Sturges, 
though Commissioner Wheeler presented a minority re- 
port in favor, very much to his credit ; and now we 
assure our good friends of the Board that this subject 
will not down, and that the times and the public exigency 
demand that they shall take the matter up again, and 
treat it effectively in the interest of the public welfare, 
safety and economy. Their own nautical school in- 
dorses the principle involved. Even the Normal Col- 
lege and the College of the City of New York may, in 
one sense, be considered industrial schools. Teaching 
is an industry, and these institutions, supported at the 
public charge, are mainly devoted to preparing men 
and women for the pursuit of that industry. It would be 
the brightest feather that New York ever won for her 
cap if she would establish a great free industrial school, 
in which boys could get instruction in the mechanic arts, 
so that every poor boy could learn a trade. 

There certainly is no good reason why we should not, 
at least, do for our girls what Boston has done for hers, 
even if the boys are obliged to wait awhile longer. 



1 86 Every -Day Topics. 

Industrial Education Again. 

To those who look intelligently and thoughtfully upon 
the popular life of the nation, a certain great and nota- 
ble want manifests itself — a want that is comparatively 
new, and that demands a new adjustment of our educa- 
ting forces. At the time when the public school system 
of our country was founded, nearly everybody was poor, 
and the girls of every family, in the absence of hired ser- 
vice, were necessarily taught, not only to knit and sew, 
but to cook and keep the house. Then women could 
not only weave but make up the garments which they 
wore, and keep them in repair. At the same time, boys 
were taught to do the farm work of their fathers, and, in 
case they chose a mechanical employment, they entered 
an apprenticeship, under regulations well understood 
and approved at the time. In short, there were ways 
by which every and girl and boy could learn to take care 
of themselves and the families that afterward came to 
them. 

Various changes have come over the country since 
that day. In the first place, a great change has been 
made in the course and amount of study in the schools 
themselves. So great has been the pressure of study 
upon the schools of some of our cities, that physicians 
have united to protest against it as a prolific source of 
insanity. Girls, for instance, cannot fulfil the require- 
ments of their teachers and have any time at home to 
learn any of the household arts which are so necessary 
to them, not only as wives and mothers, but as maidens 
having only to take care of themselves. Boys are ab- 
sorbed by their studies in the same way, and the ap- 
prenticeship system has been given up ; our foreign 
mechanics have, through their trades unions, entered 
into a thoroughly organized conspiracy against it. A 



Education and Industry. 187 

boy is not at liberty now to decide what handicraft he 
will learn, because the boss is shamefully in the hands 
of his despotic workmen, and the workmen decide that 
the fewer their number the better wages they will get. 
Their declared policy is to limit apprenticeships to the 
smallest possible number. 

The result of these changes — for some of which the 
public school is itself responsible — is the great and nota- 
ble want to which we have alluded, viz., the lack of suf- 
ficient knowledge, or of the right kind of knowledge, on 
the part of boys and girls, to take care of their own per- 
sons and to earn their own living. Girls grow up with- 
out learning to sew, and multitudes of them do not know 
how to mend their own garments. Boys leave the public 
schools without fitness for any calling whatever, except 
it may be some one which calls into requisition that 
which they have learned of writing and arithmetic. 
Some sort of clerkship is what they try for, and a me- 
chanical trade is the last thing that enters their minds. 
So we import our mechanics, and they legislate against 
the Yankee boy in all their trades unions. 

The public hardly needs to learn that the result of the 
indisposition and inability to learn trades among Ameri- 
can boys is about as disastrous as can be imagined. It 
is found that in the prisons, almost universally, the 
number of criminals who never learned a trade to those 
who are skilled workmen is as six to one. The army of 
tramps who have infested the country for the last few 
years is largely composed of men who have had no in- 
dustrial education whatever. These men, who beg at 
our doors, are mainly men who never learned a trade, 
and who can handle nothing but a shovel. A New York 
clergyman, possessing a large family of boys, recently 
declared from his pulpit that he intended that every lad 
of his family should learn some mechanical employment, 



1 88 Every -Day Topics. 

by which, in an emergency, he could get a living. He 
was right. It is in the emergencies of life — it is when 
men find themselves helpless and without the power of 
earning money — that they slip into crime, and become 
the tenants of prisons and penitentiaries. 

So the American people must, sooner or later, be 
driven to the establishment of industrial schools. To 
learn how to work skilfully with the hands must become 
a part of common education. Rich and poor alike 
should be taught how to work, for it is quite as likely 
that the rich will become poor as that some of the poor 
will become, rich ; and that is, and always must be, a 
poor education which fails to prepare a man to take care 
of himself and his dependents in life. We understand 
what to do with criminals. We confine them and set 
them to learning a trade, especially the young criminals. 
The reform schools never leave out the element of man- 
ual industry. Why is it not just as legitimate to teach the 
virtuous how to take care of themselves without crime as 
it is the vicious ? 

Indeed, there is no place where men can learn to work 
so well as in schools, where they can be taught the prin- 
ciples of mechanics. We visited a shop recently where 
hoisting apparatus is made — " blocks " or " tackle," as 
it is called — but there was not a man in the shop, from 
the master down, who could explain the principle and 
power of the pulley. They had learned their business of 
some routine mechanic who had no intelligence in the 
principles of his art, and they were obliged to confess to 
a stranger that they were ignorant of the nature of their 
work, and, consequently, without the power to make 
any improvement in it. Now, if the money spent in edu- 
cation really unfits the great majority for the work of 
life, or, rather, fails to fit them for work, why should we 
go further in this direction ? There are practical difficul- 



Education and Industry. 189 

ties in plenty, but the thing has already been success- 
fully tried in more than one country, and this is an inven- 
tive nation. The cost is the real difficulty — the cost and 
the indifference of the public mind. We have made a 
sort of god of our common school system. It is treason 
to speak a word against it. A man is regarded as a foe 
to education who expresses any doubt of the value of it. 
But we may as well open our eyes to the fact that in 
preparing men for the work of life, especially for that 
work depending upon manual skill, it is a hindrance and 
a failure.. To learn to make a painted wagon is almost to 
cover the field of the mechanic arts. To draw a wagon 
upon paper in whole and in working parts, to build and 
finish the wood-work, to forge and file the iron-work, to 
go through all the joinery of one and the welding and 
adaptation of the other, to smooth and paint the surface, 
is to achieve a preparation for almost any trade, involv- 
ing construction from similar materials. It is not so 
complicated and difficult a matter as one would at first 
suppose. We have agricultural schools of a high grade, 
and find the national account in them, but we need a 
great deal more, for the health and welfare of the youth 
of the nation — an industrial school in every ward of 
every city, and a similar school in every village, sup- 
ported at the public expense. 



TOWN AND COUNTRY. 

Life in Large and Small Towns. 
TT is said, by those who have good opportunities of 
* judging, that fifty thousand strangers spent last win- 
ter in this city. Every hotel and every boarding-house 
was full. Of these fifty thousand, probably more than 
half were permanent boarders for the winter, while the 
remainder were merchants, coming and going on errands 
of business. The fact shows that New York is becom- 
ing more and more regarded as the great capital of the 
country, and is beginning to hold toward the country the 
same relation that London holds to Great Britain, and 
Paris to France. This latter fact means more than win- 
ter boarding : it means that New York is coming to be 
regarded as a desirable home for all who have money 
enough made to enable them to live at leisure. The 
Californian who has become rich has, in many instances, 
brought his family to New York, and bought his house 
on Fifth Avenue. The country manufacturer who has 
grown to be a nabob in his little village, domiciles him- 
self on Murray Hill, that his family may have a better 
chance of life than they get in the narrow village. 

What is true of the commercial capital of the country 
is also true, to a considerable extent, of the political. 
Washington has grown to be a beautiful city and noth- 
ing has more directly ministered to its growth than the 
gathering to it from far and near of wealthy and culti- 



Town and Country. 191 

vated families, who have sought it as a residence and a 
resort. New York, the commercial capital, and Wash- 
ington, the political, will, for many years, divide be- 
tween them those families whom wealth, instead of bind- 
ing to the place where its stores were acquired, has made 
migratory. Those who wish to hear the best operas and 
witness the best acting, and who desire to be where the 
best in art of all kinds is to be found, and especially 
those whose tastes are commercial, will come to New 
York ; while those who are fond of politics, and the pe- 
culiar social life that reigns at a political centre, will go 
to Washington ; and it is hard to say which will have the 
better home. Few who have not kept themselves famil- 
iar with Washington can appreciate the long strides 
she has made, during the past few years, in population, 
and in all desirable conditions as a residence. Her cli- 
mate, her lovely position, her possession of the national 
Government, the residence she gives to the high officials 
of the nation and the representatives of other nations, 
conspire to make her one of the most attractive cities in 
America. 

But we do not undertake to represent the beauties and 
attractions of the two cities. They do not seem to need 
our help ; but we would like to say a word about those 
conditions of life in small towns which make these 
changes of residence desirable. Interested in New 
York, it is pleasant for us to see it prospering and grow- 
ing, but our interest in its growth does not blind us to 
the fact that it ought not to grow because life within it 
is more significant and fruitful than it is in the country. 
It seems to |is a great mistake for a man to leave the 
region where he makes his money to spend it and his 
life in another. If the life he leaves is not significant 
to him, it is quite likely to be his fault more than that of 
any and all other men. For he has had the money more 



192 Every- Day Topics. 

than others to enrich the character of the life around 
him ; and the possesion of that money has placed upon 
him the burden of certain duties which he has left un- 
performed. Wealth acquired in any modest locality 
belongs there, by a certain right, for it cannot exist 
there for a moment without assuming certain very defi- 
nite relations to the popular needs and the public good. 
To take money away from where it has been made is to 
impoverish all the life of the community. It reduces its 
means of living and its possibilities of progress. It not 
only takes bread and clothing from the poor, but it re- 
duces all its means of social improvement. 

The city of Cincinnati has recently held another mu- 
sical festival, and won to herself the glory of surpassing 
New York and Washington in musical culture and the 
power of producing great musical works. It cannot be 
hard to see that the life of Cincinnati has been made so 
significant to its people that they can have no temptation, 
however rich they may be, to go to New York or Wash-, 
ington to live. A commercial town that can give up a 
week to music, and furnish all the money and the time 
necessary to produce a great musical triumph, has no 
call to go elsewhere to find a more interesting life than 
it secures at home. People are much more apt to go to 
Cincinnati to live than to go away from there, because it 
is an honor to live there, and to be associated with the 
generous life and development of the place. 

What we say of Cincinnati illustrates all that we have 
to say about the smaller towns and cities. Men of 
wealth who have sense enough to long for a better life 
than they can find in their little city or village are to 
blame for not making the life around them as good as they 
want it to be. There is not a city or a village in America 
that has not within itself — in its men and women and 
money — the means for doing some good, or n©ble, or 



Totvn and Country. 193 

interesting thing, that shall lift its life above the common- 
place, and hold its own against all the attractions of 
metropolitan life. Where a man makes his money there 
he should make his home, and, as a rule, it will be 
mainly his fault and that of his family if he cannot spend 
his life there with profit and satisfaction. 

Village Improvement Societies. 

There are just about four months in the year in which 
an ordinary country village is a pleasant place to dwell 
in, viz. : from May to September. The muddy streets 
and sidewalks of autumn and spring, and the icy and 
snowy ways of winter, render it uncomfortable for walk- 
ing or driving. The foliage and herbage of summer 
cover up the ugly spots, and the greenery of the growing 
months transforms the homeliest details into the pleas- 
ant and picturesque. The moment the greenery disap- 
pears, dilapidated fences, broken-down sheds, unkept 
commons, neglected trees, and all the tolerated uglinesses 
of the village assert themselves. The village is beauti- 
ful no longer. There are thousands of villages scattered 
over the country in which there has never been a public- 
spirited attempt made to reduce their disorder to order, 
their ugliness to beauty, their discomforts to comfort. 
Every man takes care, or does not take care, of his own. 
There is no organic or sympathetic unity, and the vil- 
lages, instead of being beautiful wholes, are inharmo- 
nious aggregations. Some paint and some do not paint. 
Some keep their grounds well, and others do not keep 
their grounds at all. Unsightly wrecks of vehicles, of- 
fensive piles of rubbish, are exposed here and there, and 
every man apparently feels at liberty to make his be- 
longings as unpleasant to his neighbor as it pleases 
him. No public sentiment of order is developed ; no 
9 



194 m Every -Day Topics. 

local pride is fostered ; there is apparently no desire for 
beauty or convenience that goes one step beyond one's 
home in any case. 

It is, therefore, with great gratification that we notice 
here and there the organization of Village Improvement 
Societies, and the beautiful work which they are accom- 
plishing. Wherever they have been in existence long 
enough to accomplish anything, shade trees are planted 
by the side of the highways ; old, neglected commons 
are fenced in, graded and planted ; sidewalks are laid in 
all the streets, and a public interest in order and beauty 
is developed, which makes every man more careful of 
his own. Two villages, of which we happen to know, 
have been quite transformed within two or three years 
by the operations of these organizations ; and their be- 
neficent and beautiful work, already done, will insure to 
their localities a certain amount of beauty and conven- 
ience for the next hundred years. They have not been 
met by the public apathy that they anticipated, and they 
have been enabled, by subscriptions, fairs and festivals, 
to raise sufficient money for the work they have insti- 
tuted, while individual citizens have co-operated with 
them in their schemes. 

There is no good reason why every considerable vil- 
lage of the country should not be made convenient, 
healthful, and beautiful, by the operations of such socie- 
ties as these. There is no good reason why a public 
feeling of pride should not be engendered by them, and 
an earnest purpose developed to make each village more 
attractive than its neighbor. Selfish interest is all on 
the side of the societies ; for improvement in beauty and 
comfort means improvement in value. Emulation be- 
tween neighbors and between villages is excited, and 
niggardly property-holders are shamed into efforts to 
contribute to the popular desire for harmony. This is 



Town and Country. 195 

not a theory ; it is experience ; for, wherever they have 
been tried, these societies have done the work and exer- 
cised the influence we have stated. 

Again, these societies are agencies of culture. De- 
veloping a public spirit and a feeling of local pride, they 
cannot fail to bear fruit in other and higher directions. 
Public and domestic architecture will be the first to feel 
the effect of the new sentiment. Men will build pretty 
houses, in tone with the new order of things. New am- 
bition will be developed with relation to public buildings 
and their surroundings. The new town-hall will be bet- 
ter than the old. The new church will be an ornament 
and a glory, which the old one was not. Lyceums, 
reading-clubs, and libraries, are just as natural an out- 
growth of a public spirit engendered by these societies, 
and a public culture nourished by them, as they are, 
themselves, the outgrowth of a public necessity. 

There is really nothing more sadly wanted in the vil- 
lage life of America, than the organization of its best 
materials for purposes relating to the common good. So 
many people must always spend their lives in villages ; 
and those lives, in countless instances, are so barren 
and meaningless, so devoid of interest, so little sympa- 
thetic, that any means which promises to improve that 
life, should secure the most earnest attention. There is 
no reason why every village should not be alive with in- 
terest in its own culture and its own affairs, or why vil- 
lage life should not be crowded with attractions that 
have the power to hold every villager to his home. There 
are multitudes who never dream that their village can 
be anything more to them than a place of shelter and 
labor. They never dream that a village can be the cen- 
tre of a culture as sweet and delightful as any city pos- 
sesses, or, that they have any duty or office in making it so. 

We trust that the work of making the villages beauti- 



196 Every-Day Topics. 

ful, which has been so auspiciously begun by the socie- 
ties for improvement, will be extended until every village 
in the land will have its Association, and experience the 
natural results. It is a work in which men and women 
can unite and in which, indeed, women may lead if they 
will ; for none are more interested in it, and what comes 
of it, than women. Our villages are built. The forma- 
tive stage is passed, and another Centennial ought to 
find every American village the home of order and com- 
fort, and of a life very far advanced beyond the present 
in social culture and happiness. 

Village Reform. 

So great was the interest excited all over the country, 
last year, by v a brief article in this department on " Vil- 
lage Improvement Societies, " that we have undertaken, 
by the best means within reach, to satisfy the desire for 
knowledge upon the subject. We have received letters 
from every part of the country wishing for information — 
the latest from the interior of Texas. Unhappily, the 
thing most wanted is what we know least about, viz. : 
modes of organization and operation. If, in those New 
England towns that now have societies in successful 
operation, intelligent reports and histories could be pre- 
pared and published, they would be of incalculable bene- 
fit to the country. What the beginners want — literally 
by thousands — is to know just how to do it, or just 
how somebody else has done it. 

The articles which Colonel Waring has written for this 
magazine, and which are now in course of publication, 
are designed as helps — suggestions — inspirations. So 
intelligent and practical a man as Colonel Waring can- 
not write uninterestingly upon a topic so harmonious 
with his tastes and pursuits as this. The farming and 



Town and Country. 197 

village populations of the country will find much of in- 
terest and profit in his papers. His views of the desira- 
bleness of farm villages, in place of the isolation which 
makes the farm so hateful to the young and so barren to 
the old, are not new to those who are familiar with this 
department of the magazine ; but they are very impor- 
tant, and will need to be published many times again. 

There are, probably, a thousand villages in this coun- 
try that will, this year, form village improvement socie- 
ties, moved thereto by these papers and by the article 
that suggested them ; and the fact seems to us one of 
the most encouraging and delightful in the social and 
domestic history of the time. The local organization of 
taste, the building up of local rivalries in matters of 
order and beauty, the doing any wise thing for making 
attractive the smaller centres of population — these all 
are so intimately connected with popular development 
and elevation and content, that they might well engage 
the work of social missionaries and receive the money of 
moribund millionnaires. ' 

After all, the thing to be done ought not to be difficult. 
Americans are usually very much at home in matters of 
organization. The wisest heads are easily got together, 
and when they really are the wisest heads, they easily 
work together. The first thing wanted is wisdom and 
taste. The second on the list is money — all of it that 
can be obtained, because there is always use for more 
than can be had. With these prerequisites in hand or 
at hand, so many things will present themselves to be 
done that it will be hard to determine what shall have 
the first attention. It should not be difficult to decide 
that the first interests to be consulted are those of health 
and comfort. If there are any nuisances — any breeders 
of disease — they should be put out of the way at once. 
Then every village wants good sidewalks. Most Ameri- 



198 Every -Day Topics. 

can villages are quagmires in the spring and autumn, in 
which a man can never walk with dry feet and clean 
trowsers, and in which a lady cannot walk at all. Ex- 
actly at this point, and on this improvement, is where 
the township and the village come to a dead halt. The 
farmers who occupy the outlying agricultural acreage of 
a township are not willing to pay a dollar in taxes for the 
improvement of the village. They may be willing to do 
something for the road ; but for the sidewalk, nothing. 
On the sidewalk, then, will come the first expensive work 
of a village improvement society. To gain time, tree- 
planting should go along with this. After this come 
parks, fences, fountains — no end of things. 

The operations of a society of this kind will secure an 
indirect result of good almost commensurate with that 
which is direct. It becomes an educator, an inspiration, 
a motive, a reproof, an example. A slatternly door-yard, 
fronting a new and well-graded sidewalk, is a discord 
that will probably be discovered and corrected by its 
owner. Such a movement calls universal attention to in- 
dividual defects, and inspires a common pride. Beyond 
this, it develops a catholic, public spirit. On the im- 
provement of the village all can unite, and in this very 
delightful enterprise, spreading from village to village 
until it becomes national, men can forget that they are 
partisans, either in politics or religion, and come to- 
gether, as neighbors and friends, to work alike for them- 
selves and one another. 

Thin Living and Thick Dying. 

If any reader of this article will take General Walker's 
Statistical Atlas, based on the results of the Ninth Cen- 
sus, and turn to the page which represents the mortality 
from consumption, he will be startled to see that, over 



Town and Country, 199 

an immense area of the Northern American territory, 
one- fifth of all the deaths that occur are in consequence 
of this fell disease. The whole of Maine and New Hamp- 
shire, the most of Vermont, Massachusetts, and Con- 
necticut, and all of Northern New York, show that two 
thousand, out of every ten thousand who die, owe their 
death to consumption; while, in very much larger areas 
about the great lakes, the deaths from this disease range 
from one thousand four hundred to two thousand in every 
ten thousand. If Asiatic cholera were to claim in these 
unfortunate regions, in a single year, as many victims as 
consumption does, it would be regarded as a terrible 
epidemic — perhaps, as an awful visitation from heaven. 
It would be a great benefit to New England and all the 
regions associated with her in this sad scourge, to know 
how far the dangers of their inhospitable climate can be 
avoided by a change in diet and regimen. Our own opin- 
ion is that consumption can be driven from New Eng- 
land in three generations. Let us try to get at some of 
the facts in her case. 

The first fact is that her climate is very severe. In 
truth, consumption seems to be inseparable from the 
New England climate, and to be associated with all cli- 
mates that resemble her own in the northern parts of the 
country. Wherever the frost comes early and the win- 
ters are hard, and the springs are slow, there consump- 
tion makes its home. The next fact in the case is that 
certain ideas in regard to diet and regimen have pre- 
vailed in New England, especially among rural popula- 
tions, which ignore these facts of climate. Where so 
much of life's fuel is required to keep a man warm, there 
has never been enough taken in to repair the waste of 
labor. In these consumptive districts, we have had a 
large population proverbially and notoriously given to 
hard and constant toil, and as proverbially and notori- 



200 Every-Day Topics. 

ously frugal in their way of living. Their sleeping-rooms 
have not been warmed ; it has been considered quite 
effeminate to dress heavily, and almost disgraceful to 
favor one's self in the matter of work. In short, the 
people have not eaten enough of nourishing food ; they 
have not dressed warmly enough ; they have slept in 
temperatures altogether too low, and lived too much in 
their unventilated kitchens. 

A man does not need to be old to remember the time 
when all New England was "infatuated with Sylvester 
Graham's notions concerning food. The New England 
colleges were hot-beds of consumption. Many of their 
students made long tramps while fasting in the morning, 
and came back to breakfasts that were suicidally meagre. 
They died by scores, — by hundreds. Graham was a 
man of brains, but he was a man of mischievous hob- 
bies ; and instead of helping New England, as he most 
conscientiously endeavored to do, he harmed her griev- 
ously. It is true that there has been a great change in 
the popular opinion, but this has not yet fully pervaded 
the rural districts. In the towns, the people live better ; 
and students have learned that they must eat, and eat 
well, in order to keep themselves in health and to be 
able to do good work. 

At the tables of how many farmers and mechanics, we 
wonder, is the buckwheat breakfast gone into disgrace ? 
We readily recall the time when uncounted multitudes 
of families broke their fast of twelve hours and faced the 
work of a blustering winter day with nothing but greasy 
buckwheat cakes and molasses ! They might almost as 
well have eaten sawdust ; and what had they for dinner ? 
Boiled salt-pork and potatoes, and for supper boiled salt- 
pork and potatoes again — cold, and made palatable with 
vinegar! Ah, we forget the pie — the everlasting pie, 
with its sugary centre and its leathery crust — the one 



Town and Country. 201 

titillation of the palate that made life tolerable. Good 
bread and butter or milk, abundant fruit, beef and mut- 
ton, nutritious puddings — all these things have been 
within the reach of the people of New England, for they 
have always been the thriftiest people in the world ; but 
they have cost something, and they have not really been 
deemed necessary. The people have not realized that 
what they regarded as luxuries were necessaries, and 
that the food upon which they have depended for protec- 
tion from the climate, and for the repair of the wastes of 
labor, has been altogether inadequate, and has left them 
with impoverished blood and tuberculous lungs. 

For, after taking into account all the influence of 
heredity, which is made much of in treating of the 
causes of phthisis, insufficient nourishment is responsi- 
ble alike, in most instances, for- the deposit of tubercle 
and the inflammation to which it naturally gives rise. 
There are many men, who, by a change of living, ren- 
der the tubercles already deposited in their lungs harm- 
less. Vitality becomes so high in its power that it 
dominates these evil influences, and they live out a 
fairly long life with enemies in their lungs that are ren- 
dered powerless by the strength of the fluid that fights 
them. We have seen consumption cured again and 
again by the simple process of building up the forces of 
vitality through passive exercise in the open air, and the 
supply of an abundance of nutritious food ; and we have 
no doubt that it can be prevented in most instances by 
the same means. 

No human body can long endure the draught made 
upon it by a cold climate and by constant labor, unless 
it is well fed, well clothed, and well housed. Some- 
where deterioration will show itself, and in New England, 
— nay, all over the kingdom of Great Britain it is the 
same, where the people are worse fed than here — the 
9* 



202 Every-Day Topics. 

poverty of blood shows itself in the deposit of tubercu- 
lous matter in the lungs. There should be by this time 
some improvement in New England, in consequence of 
the increased intelligence of the people ; but so long as 
many of them are running westward, and their places 
are taken by an ignorant foreign population, it is not 
likely that the statistics will show much improvement for 
a great many years to come. If our physicians could 
only be paid for preventing disease, and could be per- 
mitted to prescribe for each family its way of living, 
there would be but little difficulty in routing from its 
stronghold that most fatal and persistent enemy of hu- 
man life, which we call consumption. 

From Country to City. 

It is presumable and probable that there arrives in 
New York City every day a considerable number of let- 
ters from the country, making inquiry concerning what 
it is possible for a countryman to do here in the way of 
business, and asking advice upon the question of his re- 
moval to the city. Every citizen of New York, with 
country associations, is applied to for information and 
counsel with regard to such a "change of base," and 
the matter seems worth the few words a careful and can- 
did observer may have to say about it. 

It is well, at the beginning, to look at the reasons 
which move people to a desire to make the change. 
The first, perhaps, are pecuniary reasons. A man living 
in a country town looks about him, and can discover no 
means for making money in a large way. Everything 
seems petty. The business of the place is small, and 
its possibilities of development seem very limited. A 
few rich men hold everything in their hands, and a young 
man, with nothing for capital but his youth and health 



Town and Country. 203 

and hope and ability, feels cramped — feels, in fact, that 
he has no chance. His savings must be small and slow, 
and a lifetime is necessary to lift him to a point where 
money will give him power. It seems to him that if he 
could get into the midst of the great business of the 
world he could find his chance for a quicker and broader 
development of wealth ; and in this connection, or with 
this fancy, he writes a letter to his city acquaintance, 
asking for his advice upon the matter. 

Another is smitten by a sense of the dryness and pet- 
tiness of the social life he is surrounded by in the coun- 
try, and the small opportunities he has for personal sat- 
isfaction and development. To be able to live among 
picture-galleries and in the vicinity of great, open libra- 
ries ; to have the finest theatres and the most attractive 
concert-halls at one's door ; to be where the best minds 
reveal themselves in pulpit and on platform in public 
speech ; where competent masters stand ready to teach 
every science and every art ; to live among those whose 
knowledge of the world is a source of constant satisfac- 
tion and culture ; to be at the very fountain-head of the 
intellectual, social, and politico-economical influences 
that sweep over the country ; to feel the stimulus of 
competition and example, and to live in an atmosphere 
charged with vital activity — all this seems such a con- 
trast to the pettiness and thinness and insignificance of 
village life, that the young man, realizing it, sits down 
and writes to his city friend, inquiring what chance there 
would be in the city for him. The country seems small 
to him ; the city, large. He feels the gossip that nutters 
about his ears to be disgusting and degrading, and chafes 
under the bondage imposed by his neighbors through their 
surveillance of, and criticism upon, all his actions. He 
wants more liberty, and for some reasons would really 
like to be where he is less known and less cared for. 



204 Every-Day Topics. 

There is still another class of country-people who long 
for a city life, and whose aspirations and dispositions 
are very much less definite and reasonable than those 
to whom we have alluded. They are not so particular 
about business or about wealth, nor do they care defi- 
nitely about superior social privileges, or about the cul- 
ture more readily secured in the city than in the coun- 
try. They are simply gregarious. They like a crowd, 
even if they have to live in " a mess." They are so fond 
of living in a multitude that they are willing to sacrifice 
many comforts to do it. Once in the city, no poverty 
will induce them to leave it. They have no interest in 
life outside of the city. These usually get to the city in 
some way without writing letters of inquiry. 

Now, it has probably surprised most inquirers to re- 
ceive uniformly discouraging answers to their questions. 
For, indeed, no man knows the trials of city life but 
those who have left quiet homes in the country and tried 
it. The great trial that every man from the country ex- 
periences on coming to the city, even supposing he has 
found employment or gone into business, relates to his 
home. His thousand dollars a year, which in the coun- 
try would give him a snug little house and comfortable 
provision, would get him in the city only a small room 
in a boarding-house. The two thousand dollars that 
would give him something more than a comfortable 
home in the country, would give him in the city only a 
better boarding-house. The three thousand that would 
give him in the country a fair establishment, with horses 
for his convenience and amusement, would in the city 
only give him a small "flat" in a crowded apartment- 
house ; and the five thousand in the country that would 
give him the surroundings of a nabob, would only pay 
the rent of a house on Fifth Avenue. The country rich 
man can live splendidly on from five to ten thousand 



Town and Country. 205 

dollars a year, while the city rich man spends from 
twenty thousand to fifty thousand dollars a year. City 
incomes look large, but relatively to city expenses they 
are no larger than the country incomes. The man who 
lives in the city has experienced the remediless drain 
upon his purse of the life which he lives, and feels that 
the risk which a business man runs of coming into un- 
known circumstances is very great. He feels that, unless 
his country friend knows just how he is going to meet 
that drain, he will be safer where he is. City life is 
naturally merciless. It has to take care of itself, and 
has all it can do to meet its own wants. If a man from 
the country comes into it, and fails, he must go to the 
wall. Friends cannot save him. A city looks coolly 
upon a catastrophe of this kind, for it is an every-day 
affair, and the victim knows perfectly well that he can 
neither help himself nor get anybody else to help him. 
So the city friend, knowing the risks and the needs of 
city life, dreads to see any country friend undertake 
them. Then, too, the faithful records of city life show 
that the chances are largely against financial success in it. 
The man of society who is attracted from the country 
to the city usually fails to calculate his own insignificance 
when he encounters numbers. The man of social con- 
sideration in the country needs only to go to the city to 
find so many heads above his own that he is counted of 
no value whatever. " Who is he ? " " What is he ? " 
and " What has he done ? " are questions that need to 
be satisfactorily answered before he will be accepted, 
and even then he will need to become a positive force 
of some sort in society to maintain his position. City 
society is full of bright and positive men and women, 
and the man and woman from the country bring none of 
their old neighborhood prestige with them to help them 
through. 



206 Every-Day Topics. 

To sum up what the city man really feels in regard to 
the coming of his country acquaintances to the city, it 
would be not far from this — viz. : 

ist. The chances for wealth are as great, practically, 
in the country as in the city, and the expenses of living 
and the risks of disaster much less. 

2d. The competitions of city life and the struggles to 
get hold of business and salaried work are fearful. No 
man should come to the city unless he knows what he is 
going to do, or has money enough in his hands to take 
care of himself until he gets a living position or becomes 
satisfied that he cannot get one. Even to-day, with the 
evidences of renewed prosperity all around us, there are 
probably ten applications on file for every desirable 
place, and no man living here could help a friend to a 
place unless he could create one. 

3d. That the social privileges of the city may be 
greater while the opportunities of social distinction and 
the probabilities of social consideration are much le§s 
than they are in the country. 

4th. That in many respects there is nothing in the 
city that can compensate for the pure pleasures of coun- 
try scenery and country life and neighborhood associa- 
tions. 

5th. That a city man's dream of the future, particu- 
larly if he ever lived in the country, is always of the 
country and the soil. He longs to leave the noise and 
fight all behind him, and go back to his country home to 
enjoy the money he may have won. 



ABOUT WOMAN. 

Woman and Her Work. 

WE often hear it said that there are many men en- 
gaged in work that women could do as well, and 
that women ought to be in their places. If we go into 
Stewart's store, we shall see quite an army of young men 
engaged in the sale of articles that call for little exercise of 
muscle in the handling — articles which women are quite 
competent to handle and to sell — and it is common to 
hear the remark that these men ought to be engaged in 
some muscular pursuit, and that women ought to do 
their present work. But do we remember how many 
•hours a day these men are obliged to be on their feet ? 
Do we remember how impossible it is for women to 
stand all day without serious damage to themselves, 
especially if they be young and in the formative period 
of their lives ? Woman is endowed with a constitution 
and charged with a function which make it quite impos- 
sible for her to do certain classes of work for which her 
mind and her hands, if we consider them alone, are en- 
tirely sufficient. Not impossible, perhaps, for she un- 
doubtedly does much that inflicts infinite damage upon 
her, and those that are born of her. 

The effects upon woman and upon the race, through 
her, of female employment constitute a great subject, 
which cannot be competently treated in an editorial, but 



208 Every-Day Topics. 

we can at least call the attention of employers to the 
needs of women engaged in doing their work. All em- 
ployments involving long periods of standing upon the 
feet are bad for women, and this all intelligent employ- 
ers, if they are humane as well, will remember. No 
woman should be obliged to stand all day. Women who 
set type, and stand while doing it, like men, invariably 
acquire physical ills that at last become unbearable. 
Factory work which involves long periods of standing 
upon the feet is ruinous to health. Employers should 
remember that the girls engaged in their service must 
have periods of rest, in a sitting position, or wear them- 
selves out, or make themselves unfit for the duties and 
functions of women. Even constrained positions while 
sitting, with no liberty of movement upon the feet, are 
bad for women. The restraints that are often put upon 
them in great establishments, with regard to their atten- 
tion to matters that call for privacy, are terrible foes to 
health. To compel a woman to run the gauntlet of ,a 
great company of men to reach the seclusions necessary 
to her is a brutal cruelty, for which any employer ought 
to be ashamed, and legally punished. 

It has been a dream of certain men and women whom 
we know, that women need only to be developed through 
a number of generations to enable them to engage in a 
large variety of employments now exclusively pursued 
by men. They have almost quarrelled with those disa- 
bilities that now attach to the sex. They have quite 
quarrelled with those who insist that those disabilities in- 
here in the nature of woman, and can never be removed. 
There are those who say that woman has a right to do 
anything she can do. There are women who insist on 
this right. This goes without saying, of course, provided 
they will qualify the claim a little. 

A woman has a right to do everything she can do, pro- 



About Woman. 209 

vided she does nothing which will unfit her for bearing 
and raising healthy children. The future of the nation 
and the race depends upon the mothers, and any woman 
who consents to become a mother has no moral right to 
engage in any employment which will unlit her for that 
function. We speak, of course, of women whose circum- 
stances give them the control of themselves. It is piti- 
ful to think that there are multitudes who have no choice 
between employments that unfit them for motherhood 
and want. It is pitiful to think that there are mothers 
who live their whole married lives in conditions which 
utterly unfit them for the functions and responsibilities 
of maternity. 

We have a theory, which, we regret to say, is not only 
unpopular among a certain class of women, but exceed- 
ingly offensive to them, viz., that -every one of them 
ought to be the mistress of a home. Women have a 
fashion in these days of rebelling against the idea that 
marriage is the great end of a woman's life. They claim 
the right to mark out for themselves and achieve an in- 
dependent career. We appreciate the delicacies of their 
position, and we bow to their choice and their rights ; 
nevertheless, we believe that in the millennium women 
will all live in their homes, and that men will not only 
do that which is now regarded as their own peculiar 
work, but much of that which is now done by women. 
There has been in these late years a great widening out 
of the field of women's employments. We have been 
inclined to rejoice in this " for the present necessity," 
but we are sure the better time is to come when man, the 
real worker of the world, will do the work of the world, or 
all of it that is done outside of home, and that woman 
will, as wife and daughter and domestic, hold to the house 
and to that variety of employments which will best con- 
serve her health and fit her for the duties and delights of 



210 Every- Day Topics. 

wifehood and the functions of motherhood. Quarrel 
with the fact as she may, woman's rights must all and al- 
ways be conditioned on her relations to the future of hu- 
manity. She has no right, as a woman, to do anything 
that will unfit her to be a mother. She may be com- 
pelled to do some things for bread that will militate 
against her in this particular; but this will be pitiful, 
and the legitimate subject of all the ameliorating influ- 
ences that practical humanity can command. 

We understand, appreciate, and respect that pride of 
independence which moves women to desire to achieve 
the advantage of self-support, as a release from the ne- 
cessity of marriage. We give assent to her demand for 
the privilege to develop herself in her own way, and to 
do those things to which she finds her powers adapted ; 
but we must exceedingly lament that degree of indepen- 
dence, and even that love of it, which interfere with mar- 
riage. Anything which renders the sexes less necessary 
to each other, or renders them less desirable to each 
other, is much to be deprecated. Now, there is no ques- 
tion that some of the pursuits which have been adopted 
by women in these latter days of freedom unfit them in 
many ways for wifehood and for maternity. There is, 
perhaps, no better test for the propriety and desirable- 
ness of a woman's calling than the marriage test. A 
woman can say, if she chooses : " I will not marry. I 
prefer the life of a maiden. I will take the liberty it 
gives me, and live the life that seems best to me, and 
cut myself forever loose from all responsibility for the 
future of my race." We say she can say this, if she 
chooses, and then settle the matter with Him who made 
her a woman ; but if she holds her heart open to men, 
and considers herself a candidate for love and marriage, 
she has no moral right to touch any employment that 
will detract from her modest maiden delicacy, or that 



About Woman. 211 

will in any degree unfit her for domestic life and all the 
responsibilities that go with marriage. Further than 
this, she positively owes it to the world, to herself, and 
to the possible husband and children of her future, to 
seek for that kind of employment and that variety of 
culture which will fit her for marriage and maternity. If 
public or professional life furnishes this employment and 
culture, they will be legitimate for her, and not other- 
wise ; and the same may be said of all the employments 
of men to which women may be attracted. Alas ! that 
there should be so many whom circumstances make 
impotent for any choice in the matter of their lives and 
destinies ! 

Men and Women. 

Among all the burdens that woman is called upon to 
bear, there is none that can be made so galling to her 
as the burden of dependence. Man is usually, in the 
life of the family, the bread-winner. However much he 
may be helped by woman in the economies of home life, 
he is usually the one who earns and carries the money 
on which the family subsists. Whatever money the 
woman wants comes to her from his hands, as a rule. 
Now, this money can be given into her hands in such a 
way that she cannot only preserve her self-respect, but 
rejoice in her dependence ; or it can be given to her in 
such a way that she will feel like a dog when she asks for 
it and when she receives it — in such a way that she will 
curse her dependence, and mourn over all the shame and 
humiliation it brings to her. We are sorry to believe that 
there are multitudes of wives and daughters and sisters, 
who wear fine clothing and who fare sumptuously every 
day, who would prefer to earn the money they spend to 
receiving it from the ungracious and inconsiderate hands 
upon which they depend. 



2 1 2 Every -Day Topics. 

If we had entitled this article " A Study of Husbands,'' 
it would have led us more directly, perhaps, to our main 
purpose ; but the truth is that what we have to say has 
to do with dependent women in all the relations of life. 
It is natural for woman, as it is for man, to desire to 
spend money in her own way — to be free to choose, and 
free to economize, and free to spend whatever may be 
spent upon herself or her wardrobe. It is a delightful 
privilege to be free, and to have one's will with whatever 
expenditures may be made for one's own conveniences 
or necessities. A man who will interfere with this free- 
dom, and who will deny this privilege to those who de- 
pend upon him, is either thoughtless or brutal. We 
know — and women all know — men who are very gener- 
ous toward their dependents, but who insist on reserv- 
ing to themselves the pleasure of purchasing whatever 
the women of their households may want, and then 
handing it over to them in the form of presents. The 
women are loaded with nice dresses and jewelry, and 
these are bestowed in the same way in which a Turk 
lavishes his favors upon the slaves of his harem. Now, 
it is undoubtedly very gratifying to these men to exer- 
cise their taste upon the necessities and fineries of their 
dependent women, and to feast themselves upon the 
surprises and the thanks of those receiving their favors ; 
but it is a superlatively selfish performance. If these 
women could only have had in their hands the money 
which these gifts cost, they would have spent it better, 
and they would have gratified their own tastes. A man 
may be generous enough to give to a woman the dresses 
and ornaments she wears, who is very far from being 
generous enough to give her money, that she may freely 
purchase what she wants, and have the great delight of 
choosing. 

This is one side — not a very repulsive one — of man's 



About Woman. 213 

selfishness in his dealings with women ; but there is an- 
other side that is disgusting to contemplate. There are 
great multitudes of faithful wives, obedient daughters, 
and "left over" sisters, to whom there is never given a 
willing penny. The brute who occupies the head of the 
family never gives a dollar to the women dependent 
upon him without making them feel the yoke of their 
dependence, and tempting them to curse their lot, with 
all its terrible humiliations. Heaven pity the poor 
women who may be dependent upon him — women who 
never ask him for money when they can avoid it, and 
never get it until they have been made to feel as meanly 
humble as if they had robbed a hen-roost ! 

There is but one manly way in treating this relation 
of dependent women. If a man recognizes a woman as 
a dependent, — and he must do so, so far, at least, as his 
wife and daughters are concerned, — he acknowledges 
certain duties which he owes to them. His duty is to 
support them, and, so far as he can do it, to make them 
happy. He certainly cannot make them happy if, in all 
his treatment of them, he reminds them of their depen- 
dence upon him. We know of no better form into 
which he can put the recognition of his duty than that 
of an allowance, freely and promptly paid whenever it 
may be called for. If a man acknowledges to himself 
that he owes the duty of support to the women variously 
related to him in his household, let him generously de- 
termine how much money he has to spend upon each, 
and tell her just how much she is at liberty to call upon 
him for, per annum. Then it stands in the relation of a 
debt to the woman, which she is at liberty to call for 
and to spend according to her own judgment. We have 
watched the working of this plan, and it works well. 
We have watched the working of other plans, and they 
do not work well. We have watched, for instance, the 



214 Every -Day Topics, 

working of the plan of the generous husband and father, 
who says : " Come to me for what you want whenever 
you want it. I don't wish to limit you. Some years 
you will want more, and some less." This seems very 
generous ; but, in truth, these women prefer to know 
about what the man thinks they ought to spend, or 
about what he regards as the amount he can afford to 
have them spend. Having gained this knowledge by a 
voluntarily proffered allowance, they immediately adapt 
their expenditures to their means, and are perfectly con- 
tent. It is a comfort to a dependent woman to look 
upon a definite sum as her own — as one that has been 
set aside for her exclusive use and behoof. 

A great multitude of the discomforts that attach to a 
dependent woman's lot arise from the obtuseness and 
thoughtlessness of the men upon whom they depend. 
There are some men so coarsely made that they cannot 
appreciate a woman's sensitiveness in asking for money. 
They honestly intend to do their duty — even to deal 
generously — by the women dependent upon them ; but 
they cannot understand why a woman should object to 
come to them for what they choose to give her. If 
they will ask their wives to tell them frankly how they 
can improve their position, these wives will answer that 
they can do it by putting into their hands, or placing 
within their call, all the money per annum which they 
think they can afford to allow them, and not to compel 
them to appeal to their husbands as suppliants for 
money whenever they may need a dollar or the quarter 
of one. 

The absolutely brutal husband and father will hardly 
read this article, but we recall instances of cruelty and 
insult toward dependent women that would make any 
true man indignant in every fibre. A true woman may 
legitimately rejoice in her dependence upon a true man, 



About Woman. 215 

because he will never make her feel it in any way ; but 
a brute of a husband can make a true woman feel her 
humiliation as a dependent a hundred times a day, until 
her dependence is mourned over as an unmitigated 
curse. 

Woman's Winter Amusements. 

We have many reasons, in the direct testimonials that 
have come to us, for believing that an article which we 
published in this department a year or two since, on 
" Winter Amusements," was remarkably suggestive and 
stimulating in the establishment of clubs for culture and 
recreation. W T e spoke specially of reading clubs, " Shak- 
spere clubs," etc. The project was entered upon in a 
great many towns throughout the length and breadth of 
the land, and great good has come of it. To open a 
still wider field of intellectual recreation and instruction 
is the object of this article. 

In a certain country town, which we need not name, 
there was established last year a "Rome Club." A 
considerable number of intelligent ladies, moved thereto 
by the existence of a literary club among their husbands 
and brothers, gathered together and formed a club 
among themselves for the study of historical cities. 
Rome was chosen as the first city to be investigated — 
its pagan history, its Christian history, its art in various 
departments, its relations to the world at various epochs, 
etc., etc. Subdivisions of the larger topics were made, 
and each woman was given a branch to study, with the 
duty to write out her conclusions and results, and to 
read them at the weekly meetings of the club. It is 
declared to us by one who watched the developments of 
the enterprise that, as the result of that winter's most 
interesting work, this town contains the largest number 
of women who know everything about Rome than any 



216 Every -Day Topics. 

town in the United States can boast. Every available 
library was ransacked for material, books were over- 
hauled that were black with the undisturbed dust of a 
century, knowledge was organized, put into form, and 
communicated ; and when the winter closed, the women 
found not only that they had been immensely interested, 
but that their field of knowledge had been very much 
enlarged. 

This year, this same club will take up another city. 
Whether it will be London, or Paris, or Jerusalem, or 
Athens, or Venice, we do not know, and it does not 
matter. But what a mine of interest and instruction 
lies before them in any of these ! How very small do 
the ordinary amusements of a town look by the side of 
the employments of such a club as this ! What a cure 
for gossip and neighborhood twaddle is contained in 
such a club ! What an enlargement of the sphere of 
thought comes of such amusements and employments ! 
How the whole world, through all its ages and among, 
all its scenes and peoples, becomes illuminated with a 
marvellous human interest, to women who study it to- 
gether, and with a certain degree of competition, in this 
way ! 

Well, a club for the study of the great historical cities 
can be formed anywhere, and there ought to be a thou- 
sand of them formed this winter. Wherever there may 
be women who find life something of a bore, when follow- 
ed in the ordinary way, wherever there may be women 
who have leisure that hangs heavily upon their hands, 
or a round of tasteless courtesies to go through with, 
wherever there may be women whose minds are starving 
while they execute the routine of housekeeping duties, 
there will be found the materials for such a club as this. 
They would be better daughters, wives and mothers, for 
the culture that would be won by such a club, and be 



About Woman. 21 J 

saved the everlasting yearning for an impossible career 
that seems to be moving so many women's souls at the 
present time. Life is good and duty is good, if we only 
give them flavor. Porridge without salt may be nutri- 
tious, but it is not palatable. The great want of the 
clever women we are rearing in such numbers, is not' so 
much a public career as a palatable private one. A 
round of humdrum household duties, or around of fash- 
ionable courtesies within the rigid rules of etiquette, 
becomes tasteless to any woman. What better can she 
do for profit or for pleasure than to season her life with 
society in the pursuit of knowledge ? 

Of course, enterprises of this kind are not necessa- 
rily confined to the study of cities. Countries may be 
studied with the same advantage — perhaps even with 
greater advantage. A special topic may be taken up. 
At this time much is written upon art. It is practically 
a new topic in this country. We, as a nation, are now 
making our beginnings in art. The greatest sculptors and 
painters America has produced are living men to-day. 
Art has no history here. Art, historically, then — art in its 
relations to civilization — art in its influence upon personal 
character — art as an outgrowth of life and a power upon 
life — furnishes a subject that may well interest a group 
of women for a winter, not only, but for many winters. 
W T e know of girls who are as much interested in works 
of political economy as if they were novels. We can 
hardly imagine anything more interesting to a club of 
bright girls who have left school, than a winter in politi- 
cal economy. The subject may be pursued, simply as 
a matter of social reading and discussion ; or each may 
be charged with gathering the distinguishing views of 
given writers, and presenting them in brief. 

The great point is to get together, and to become in- 
terested together in some region of knowledge, or art, or 



2 1 8 Every -Day Topics. 

exalted human concern. Life with men is active, excit- 
ing, exhausting. The club life of men is very rarely 
intellectual, and very rarely in any way elevating. Much 
of it debases and curses, with its eating and drinking, 
and its selfish separation from the family life. A wom- 
an's club should always be an addition to the family 
life, and so transform a home into a temple. There are 
many women in the world who wish they were men. 
There is not one man who wishes he were a woman. The 
simple reason is that woman has not yet learned how to 
give flavor to her life. We do not believe that God has 
made the lot of the sexes unequal. When woman shall 
make the most and best of her life, she will spend no 
time in wishing for a coarser nature and a rougher lot 
than her own. Let her avail herself of the means at her 
hand for making her life interesting, and the work will 
be done. That she may conquer the realm that legiti- 
mately is hers, we put the club in her hand and beg her 
to use it. 



THE CURSE OF PAUPERISM. 

The Pauper Poison. 

^PHERE is not a more humiliating characteristic of 
A human nature than its aptitude for pauperism. It 
is alike discouraging and disgusting. It is now publicly 
declared, by responsible professional men, that the ma- 
jority of those who receive medicines at the free dispen- 
saries in this city are able to pay for them, and pretend 
to be poor simply to avoid paying for them. It is also 
declared that between thirty and thirty-five per cent, of 
our population are receiving medical attendance gratui- 
tously. Instances are detailed in which genteelly dressed 
men and women, and persons known to be possessed of 
considerable real estate, have begged for medicine. 

Now, this is only an indication of the presence of a 
moral poison, distributed throughout the whole Ameri- 
can people. It may not be as prevalent here as it is 
abroad ; but it must be remembered that it has not had 
so long a time to work. They are all manifestations of 
the pauper poison, however — these multiform attempts 
that are made to get something for nothing. The old 
" dead-head system " on the railroads, not entirely done 
away with now, was only a branch of pauperism, and it 
is astonishing to see how many people there are to-day 
who are willing to part with self-respect in order to get 
a free pass on a railroad or a steamboat. To enjoy a 



220 Every-Day Topics. 

ride, the expense of which comes out of somebody else, 
is, to the ordinary human soul, exceeding sweet. If the 
willing and rejoicing dead-head is to be found plentifully 
scattered through good society, it must not be wondered 
at that among the humbler classes his equivalent is met 
with at every turn. This whole matter of u tipping" 
waiters, and of waiters expecting to be " tipped," is a 
very marked manifestation of the poison of pauperism. 
A man steps into a restaurant to purchase and con- 
sume a meal. He finds a waiter at his side whose busi- 
ness it is to w T ait upon him. It was for this service that 
he was hired by the proprietor, and he is paid for it what 
his labor is worth. At any rate, his service is reckoned 
into the bill of the customer, and when that bill is paid, 
the customer's obligations are all discharged. Never- 
theless, there stands the expectant waiter, who hopes to 
be twice paid for his work, or, rather, hopes to receive 
something for nothing. The whole army of waiters have 
become, in their souls, beggars. Their little arts of extra 
attentiveness are the arts of beggary, and nothing else. 
Their practical and obtrusive pauperism is a nuisance to 
the community, as well as a curse' to them. Manhood 
goes out as the fee, unearned, comes in. Manhood stays 
out of one whose expectation is always hankering for a tip. 

We have said that the waiter is paid for his service by 
his employer, but this is not always so. The proprietor 
himself is often a pauper. He tries to get something for 
nothing. He charges full prices for his food, and cheats 
the waiter out of his wages, that he may compel him to 
collect them of his customers. He not only practises 
the arts of the pauper himself, but he actually forces 
his waiters into practical pauperism. 

The spoils doctrine, as it has been held and practised 
in party politics for the last thirty years, is a pauper doc- 
trine. It has grown out of the almost universal wish to 



The Curse of Pauperism. 221 

get a living, or to get rich, at the public expense. To 
get a chance at the public money, men have been will- 
ing to sell their independence, to do the dirty work of 
ambitious politicians, and to become morally debased 
to an utterly hopeless extent. Men have hung to cor- 
porations in the same way, and they cannot yet be shaken 
off from them- To get something for nothing — to get 
something for less than it is worth — to get something 
without paying for it its equivalent in good, honest work, 
especially if it could be taken from the Government or a 
corporation — this has been the shameful greed of the age, 
and it is only pauperism. It comes from the genuine 
poison. It is a direct and legitimate development of 
the moral scrofula which taints the blood of the country. 
The signs of the poison are everywhere. They are 
notably wherever there is a spirit of speculation. Wall 
street is the very paradise of pauperism — its paradise or 
its hell, it matters little which. Wherever there is a man 
who is getting something for nothing — receiving it, not 
as a dire necessity, but gladly and as a matter of policy 
— there is a pauper. There are multitudes of churches 
that insist that their ministers shall be paupers. They 
never establish a thorough business relation between 
themselves and their teachers, but it is a gift by whatso- 
ever the latter may be benefited. Unhappily, there are 
too many ministers who accept the position gladly. Of 
course, there is a vital distinction between the gifts that 
flow toward a public teacher as manifestations of the 
popular affection, and gifts that are doled out to him be- 
cause it is thought that he needs them. The first can be 
received with honor; but the second cannot be received, 
in any case where the money has been honestly earned, 
without the disgrace of the recipient and the moral dam- 
age of the donor. But it happens that multitudes of 
ministers are actually trained for pauperism. In a cer- 



222 Every-Day Topics. 

tain notable theological school, which now contains one 
hundred and ten students, there are ninety young men 
who are receiving aid. What method is it possible to pur- 
sue with these men, so sure to destroy their independence 
and manliness, as this ? How easy it will be for these 
men, having once accepted alms and lived on that which 
has cost them nothing, to go on in that course, and how 
horrible it is to have more than half of the clergy trained 
up to a love of dependence rather than to a hatred of it ! 
We have the poison of pauperism here at the very foun- 
tain-head of what we regard as the highest and best in- 
fluences. 

We have no doubt that these representations will seem 
overwrought to those who have not accustomed them- 
selves to examining and thinking upon the subject, but 
they are not overwrought. The subtlety of this pauper 
poison enables it to enter ten thousand forms of life, and 
to hide itself behind innumerable disguises. Wherever 
there is a man who desires to get something without 
rendering its equivalent in money or work — a man, we 
mean, who' has the equivalent to render — there is a pau- 
per. It matters nothing that he wears good clothes, or 
occupies a good position. The poison is in his soul, 
eating out — if it has not already eaten out — his manhood. 

The Disease of Mendicancy. 

An English paper, in some recent utterance, re- 
minded the American nation of the appearance of an 
unmistakable evidence that it is growing old. It pos- 
sesses "the tramp." The war left with us, as war 
always leaves in every country, a great number of men 
utterly demoralized. The hard times have cut them 
loose from remunerative work, and they have become 
rovers, nominally looking for employment, but really 



The Curse of Pauperism. 223 

looking for life without it. They have lost their self- 
respect, if they ever had any; lost their love of steady in- 
dustry, lost all desire for independence, lost their sense 
of manhood and of shame, and have imbibed the incura- 
ble disease of mendicancy. We mistake the nature of 
the case entirely, if we suppose that better times and 
fair wages for all, would cure these men and relieve the 
country of their presence and their support. Leprosy is 
not more incurable than mendicancy. When the dis- 
ease has once fastened itself upon a man — when, through 
long months or years, he has willingly and gladly lived 
on the industry of others, and roamed around without a 
home — he becomes a hopeless case, and nothing but the 
strong arm of the law can make him a self-supporting 
man. 

The same is true of the dead-beat, who is only " the 
tramp " of the city. He is not so humble a man as the 
country tramp. He dresses better and supports him- 
self by different methods. He is the man who wants to 
get to Boston or Baltimore, where he has friends. He 
is the man who has just arrived from the South, having 
run as far as New York to get away from the yellow fever, 
or whatever trouble may be in progress there at the date 
of his application. He is the man who wishes to get 
money to bury his wife or child. Or, he is about to receive 
funds, but is in a starving condition, and wants some- 
thing to assist him in " bridging over." If you happen 
to have been born in Vermont, he comes to you as a 
Vermonter. Perhaps he comes to you because you and 
he happen to have the same name. There is no end to 
the lies he can tell and does tell. W 7 e have some very 
genteel and high and mighty dead-beats in New York, 
who never stoop to beg, but rise to borrow, and forget 
to pay. We know of one woman here, claiming to be 
productively literary, who apparently lives well on the 



224 Every -Day Topics. 

funds which a bright and sweet- faced daughter borrows 
for her. Now, all these people are hopelessly diseased. 
They can never be restored to sound manhood and 
womanhood. What is worse than all the rest is that 
they perpetuate their mendicancy through their families. 
So we have the tramps and the dead-beats, and the 
regular old-fashioned paupers, and they are all alike — 
with some exceptions, perhaps, in favor of the regular 
old-fashioned paupers ; for now and then there is one of 
these who, much against his will, has been forced by 
circumstances into pauperism. 

What are we to do with these people ? How is this 
disease to be treated? These questions demand an 
early answer, for the evils to which they relate are in- 
creasing with alarming rapidity. There is the general 
feeling that they will take care of themselves, so soon as 
prosperous times shall return ; but, as we have already 
said, this is a mistake. The dead-beat will never re- 
form. The tramp will be a tramp for life, shifting from 
country to city as his comforts may demand, and ready 
to be led into any mischief which will give him " grub " 
and grog. There ought to be, this very winter, in every 
State in the Union, such laws passed as will restrain the 
wanderers, and force them to self-support in some public 
institution. A standing commission of vagrancy should 
be instituted in every large city and every county in the 
land ; and institutions of industry established for the 
purpose of making these men self-supporting, and of 
curing them of their wretched disease. We have lunatic 
asylums, not only for the benefit of the lunatics, but for 
the relief of the community ; and among the dead-beats 
and tramps we have an enormous number of men who 
are just as truly diseased as the maddest man in Utica, 
or at the Bloomingdale Asylum. Something must be 
done with them, and done at once, if we are to have any 



The Curse of Pauperism. 225 

comfort by day or safety by night ; for men who are so 
demoralized as to beg from choice and lie by profes- 
sion, have but to take a single step to land in ruffianism. 
Already they intimidate, and rob and murder, to get the 
means to support their useless lives. 

It is only last year that we heard of a force of five 
hundred of them approaching a Western city, to the 
universal alarm of the inhabitants. The disclosures 
connected with the recent fraudulent registration in this 
city show how easy it is, under the lead of demagogues, 
to assemble them by tens of thousands at any point de- 
sired, and how readily they can be induced to perjure 
their souls for bread and beer. These facts menace both 
our homes and our liberties. It is not a tramp, here and 
there, such as we have at all times ; but it is an army of 
tramps that can be brought together on the slightest oc- 
casion, for any deed of rascality and blood which it may 
please them to engage in. The evil has come upon 
us so noiselessly — so almost imperceptibly — that it is 
hard for us to realize that we are tolerating, and feeding 
for nothing, a huge brood of banditti, who will ultimately 
become as monstrous and as disgraceful to our country 
and to Christian civilization as the banditti of Greece or 
Southern Italy. 

The one fact which we wish to impress upon the peo- 
ple, and upon legislators, in this article, is that the evil 
which we are describing and commenting upon is not 
one that will cure itself — is not one that will be cured by 
national prosperity — is not one that will be cured by 
driving tramps from one State into another — and is a 
hopelessly demoralizing mental disease. It must be 
taken hold of vigorously, and handled efficiently and 
wisely. There is not a month to be lost. Thus far in 
the history of the country we have been singularly free 
from any pauperism but that which we have imported 
10* 



226 Every-Day Topics. 

from the great European repositories of pauperism. 
But matters have changed. The tramps are not all 
foreigners. They are, to a very considerable number, 
our own American flesh and blood, and unless we are 
willing to see the country drift into the condition of the 
older peoples of the world, where mendicancy has grown 
to be a gigantic burden and curse, and pauperism a 
thing of hopeless heredity, we must do something to 
check the evil, and do it at once. 

The Public Charities. 

There comes to our table a little volume from the pen 
of Mr. S. C. Hall, entitled " Words of Warning, in 
Prose and Verse, addressed to Societies for Organizing 
Charitable Relief and Suppressing Mendicity." It is an 
exceedingly sentimental little book, and, if it had been 
written by an author less venerable than Mr. Hall, it 
would seem impertinent. But Mr. Hall is very much in 
earnest, and takes the liberty of his years to scold as well 
as to warn. His quarrel seems to be with the societies 
that, before giving, wish to investigate the circumstances 
of the applicant for alms : 

" You teach us how to shirk the beggar tribe, 
And tell us to give nothing, but subscribe. 
Of course we can't pay double, so we do 
The business part of charity through you." 

Here follows a sharper paragraph : 

" ■ Give nought to common beggars ' — that's the rule ; 
The Alpha and Omega of your school ; 
You bid us send all suppliants to your door ; 
When sad or sick, or desolate or poor ; 
After inquiry duly made, you give 
To such as— pending the proceedings — live \ 



The Curse of Pauperism. 227 

Mr. Hall proceeds to cite a good many cases, or sup- 
posable cases, which go to show that societies are slow, 
and he says, still in rhyme : 

<l Better a score of times be * taken in,' 
Than let one suffering sinner die in sin — 
Than hear the coroner to-morrow say, 
4 Died starved,' of one you might have saved to-day." 

It is a long and formidable arraignment which he makes 
of the " organizations," ending with the following 
charges ; 

''They give to Mercy a perpetual frown, 
And Hope they keep — with broken anchor — down. 
To Charity they lend the garb she scorns, 
And Love himself — eternal Love — they crown, 
Not with the sacred nimbus, but the thorns ! " 

To Mr. Hall's poetical efforts, he adds some " Words of 
Warning " in prose, in which he expresses the belief 
that the organizations which engage his opposition (i dry 
up the natural channel of the heart, check or destroy 
sympathy for suffering, make indifference to woe excusa- 
ble, if not obligatory," etc., etc. 

We have thus tried to give the drift of our friend's 
little book, and we can only respond that, imperfect as 
the organizations are, and professionally indifferent and 
dilatory as they are too apt to become, they are, on the 
whole, very much better managers and counsellors than 
he is. It is very nice to yield to one's benevolent im- 
pulses ; it is good to be developed in the high benigni- 
ties ; there is no pleasure greater than that which is born 
of personal beneficence ; but if, in order to compass 
these advantages to ourselves, we are certain to develop 
a thousand liars and make as many paupers, do not our 
satisfaction and improvement become somewhat expen- 
sive to the community ? Indeed, it is quite possible to 



228 Every-Day Topics. 

make our benevolence the most selfish quality we pos- 
sess. We can easily imagine men who selfishly hug to 
themselves the delight of giving, right and left, to those 
who excite their sympathy and pity, while they shut 
their eyes to the falsehoods and tricks which they have 
encouraged. 

It is very sad to remember that the " organizations " 
of which Mr. Hall speaks so bitterly have had their ori- 
gin in a great, commanding, public necessity. If nine 
beggars in ten had ever been proved to be true objects 
of charity, then we could afford to give without investi- 
gation'; but it is perfectly well understood that more 
than nine beggars in ten are liars, and that impulsive and 
indiscriminate giving, even to those who are worthy, de- 
moralizes them. It is appalling to think that wherever 
a charitable door is opened, whether it lead to a benevo- 
lent individual or a benevolent society, the throng that 
enter are mainly shams and cheats. 

The physicians of New York have had their attention 
called recently to the abuses of the free dispensaries of 
medicines. They were satisfied that multitudes were 
availing themselves of the benefits of the free dispensa- 
ries who could afford to pay for their medicines. A 
visitor of the Association for Improving the Condition of 
the Poor took up the matter, and investigated one hun- 
dred and fifty-two cases. Of sixty-two male applicants, 
twenty-three were not found at all — they had given 
wrong addresses. Twenty families reported wages per 
week of from three to eighteen dollars, while their rent 
per month was from nine to twelve dollars. Only six of 
the sixty-two were found to be without means. Of the 
ninety females who applied, thirty- five gave wrong ad- 
dresses, and could not be found. Only six of the 
whole number — the same as in the case of the males 
— were found to be without means. Cleaners, laun- 



The Curse of Pauperism. 229 

dresses, paper-folders, cigar-makers, cap-makers, artifi- 
cial flower makers, etc., were represented among the 
applicants who were found with family wages going as 
high in some instances as twenty dollars a week. So 
here were twelve out of one hundred and fifty-two indi- 
viduals applying for a certain form of aid who really had 
a claim for aid, and a hundred and forty who could have 
paid for that which they lied to obtain for nothing ! 

Now, if we are to learn anything from this investiga- 
tion, it is that, by following the advice of such amiable 
enthusiasts as Mr. Hall, we encourage eleven applicants 
for charity in the most rascally falsehood and deception, 
while we really help only one who is worthy of our alms. 
Can we afford this, even if it should happen to help us 
in the development of a beneficent life ? We think not. 
Nay, we may go farther and say that no man has a moral 
right in such a community as ours to take the matter of 
giving into his own hands, unless he is willing to devote 
all the requisite time to investigating the cases to which 
he takes the responsibility of ministering. Just as soon 
as he undertakes to do this, the first fact he will meet is 
the impossibility of obtaining the addresses of his bene- 
ficiaries. Fifty-eight out of one hundred and fifty-two 
who begged for medicine lied concerning the places 
where they lived. The chances are that every one of 
these persons had money, or was engaged in some pur- 
suit of w T hich he or she was ashamed. It is fair to con- 
clude, at least, that if any agent of the dispensary were 
really to find out the circumstances of these persons, he 
would adjudge them unworthy of aid. Needy people are 
not apt to cover up the circumstances which will sub- 
stantiate their claims to charity. This matter has been 
tried a great many times, and after a man has gone, in 
vain, all over town to find the objects of charity who 
have cheated him into helping them, and then carefully 



230 Every -Day Topics. 

thrown him off their scent, he begins to think very well 
of " organization " — that red rag which so stirs up the 
Bull in the venerable English poet. 

Such " organization " as we have, in most of the 
American cities, is sufficiently open to criticism, with- 
out doubt. We have altogether too much of it, and too 
much of the competitive element in it ; but wise and 
kindly managed organization gives us our only safety in 
dealing with pauperism. Individual giving may be very 
pleasant to Mr. Hall and his friends, but it is sure to 
make a great deal of work in the long run for the societies 
whose policy and work he contemns. The time seems to 
be past when sentimentality can be used with safety in 
the administration of charitable relief. 

Once More the Tramp. 

is very strange that no more vigorous measures are 
taken for the abatement of what is very properly called^ 
" the tramp nuisance." It is strange, because the nui- 
sance is as great in the country as it is in the city, and 
there is no section and no interest that would not be 
served by a sweeping measure of suppression. A feel- 
ing has undoubtedly existed that much of the tramping 
is attributable to the bad times — that men are wandering 
in honest s.earch of employment. This feeling should be 
corrected by this time. If anything is notorious now, it is 
that ninety-nine tramps in a hundred — an overwhelming 
proportion, at any rate — would not work at any wages, if 
they could. The experiment tried in Massachusetts by 
detectives exposes the utter hollowness of the pretence 
that these fellows desire work. They scorn work and 
scout the idea of engaging in it. They coolly propose to 
live upon the community, and to " eat their bread in the 
sweat of other men's faces," and to do this in perpetuo. 



The Curse of Pauperism. 231 

In the city, where these parasites prefer to spend the 
winter, it is not so very hard to get along with them. 
They are an offensive, dirty, disgraceful set to have 
around, it is true. One shrinks from contact with them 
— shivering in their abominable rags and dirt — and feeds 
them with cold victuals at his basement door, but he is 
not afraid of them. In the country, during the summer, 
and near the great lines of travel, the tramp is a different 
being. Whatever of enterprise there may be in him is 
exhibited during that season. Then he can steal eggs, 
rob hen-roosts, bully women and children who find 
themselves unprotected at home while the men are in 
the fields, set forests on fire, and commit burglaries and 
murders whenever it may be desirable and convenient. 
They rove in bands. We have seen them in forests dur- 
ing the past winter near inland cities — a dozen of them 
smoking and lounging beside a fire made of stolen wood. 
They are to be counted by tens of thousands, and they 
stand ready to go into any mischief into which the dem- 
agogue with money in his pocket may see fit to lead 
them. They are the very lowest layer of the proletariat 
— a class whose existence in America has been declared 
again and again, and in no case more distinctly and de- 
plorably than in the labor-riots of last year. No diffi- 
culty can rise between labor and capital at which these 
fellows will not be ready to " assist." They stand wait- 
ing, a great multitude, to join in any mob that will give 
them the slightest apology for pillage, and the safety in 
robbery that comes of numbers. We have no doubt that 
they would have been glad to sign a petition for the pas- 
sage of the Bland silver bill. 

We cannot do what the French Government once did 
under similar circumstances — banish fifty thousand of 
them to colonial servitude ; and it is a great pity that we 
cannot. If we could gather the whole disgusting multi- 



232 Every -Day Topics. 

tude, wash them, put new clothes upon them, and under 
military surveillance and direction set them to quarrying 
stone, or raising corn and cotton for ten years, we might 
save some of them to decency and respectability, and 
relieve the honest people of the country of their pres- 
ence and their support. If we cannot do this, however, 
there are things we can do. Every State in the Union 
can gather these men, wherever found, into work-houses, 
where they can be restrained from scaring and preying 
upon the community, and made to earn the bread they 
eat and the clothes they wear. It is necessary, of course, 
to throw away all sentimentality in connection with them. 
The tramp is a man who can be approached by no mo- 
tive but pain — the pain of a thrashing or the pain of 
hunger. He hates work ; he has no self-respect and no 
shame ; and, by counting himself permanently out of 
the productive and self-supporting forces of society, he 
counts himself out of his rights. He has no rights but 
those which society may see fit of its grace to bestow 
upon him. He has no more rights than the sow that 
wallows in the gutter, or the lost dogs that hover around 
the city squares. He is no more to be consulted, in his 
wishes or his will, in the settlement of the question as to 
what is to be done with him, than if he were a bullock in 
a corral. 

Legislation concerning this evil seems to have been 
initiated in various States, but at this writing we cannot 
learn that anything effective has been done. It would 
be well if the States could work in concert in this mat- 
ter ; but one great State like New York, or Pennsylvania, 
or Ohio, has only to inaugurate a stringent measure to 
drive all the other states into measures that shall be its 
equivalent The tramp whose freedom is imperilled in 
New York, will fly to New Jersey or New England, and 
New Jersey and New England will be obliged to protect 



The Curse of Pauperism. 233 

themselves. So one powerful state can compel unan- 
imity of action throughout the country. The legislature 
of New York had a bill up a year ago which came to 
nothing. We hope the present session will see some- 
thing done, but legislators have so many things to do 
besides looking after the public safety and the public 
morality, that we are quite prepared to hear that this 
matter will be overlooked. But something must be done, 
somewhere, very soon, if we propose to have anything 
like safety and comfort in our homes, or to relieve our- 
selves of a great burden of voluntary, vicious, and even 
malicious pauperism. 

Pauperizing the Clergy. 

We had occasion, in a recent article on the general 
topic of pauperism, to speak of the bad influences of 
charitable aid when rendered to young men preparing 
for the Christian ministry. As everything we said was 
conceived in a spirit of the warmest friendliness toward 
the profession, we were not quite prepared for the acrid, 
not to say contemptuous, criticism with which it was re- 
ceived by a portion of the religious press. We had sup- 
posed that the desirableness of independent means in 
the acquisition of an education, for any profession, was 
beyond controversy. W 7 e had supposed that clergy and 
laity alike regarded it a misfortune to a young man to be 
in any way obliged to accept aid in preparing himself 
for the work of his life. Indeed, they undoubtedly so 
regard it still ; and if it is for any other reason than that 
it tends to degrade and pauperize him, we have not 
learned it. 

But one religious paper, which ought to be ashamed 
of its childishness, has undertaken to controvert this 
very widely held opinion. We have not its words before 



234 Every -Day Topics. 

us, but the point it makes is that if it pauperizes a young 
man to have his education given him, it will pauperize 
him equally whether it is given him by the hand of 
charity or by the hand of his parents ! Another religious 
paper copies this with approval ! We should do both 
papers great injustice if we should assume that they do 
not know better than this. The sophistry is so puerile that 
one feels humiliated in being compelled to expose it. A 
man who takes the responsibility of introducing a child 
into existence assumes certain duties and obligations 
which place him in relations to his offspring such as he 
holds to no other human being. The child possesses 
certain rights in his father's labor, his acquired capital, 
his home, his conditions, that can never be alienated ex- 
cept by his crimes. Among these rights is that of a prep- 
aration for the work and duty of life. Now, the differ- 
ence between the position of a boy who feels that in his 
education he is receiving his natural and legal right, and 
of one who knows that his education comes to him as a 
gift of charity to helplessness, is about as wide as can be 
conceived. Nobody knows this any better than the 
charity student himself. If he is manly, his position 
galls and worries him, and he is never happy until he has 
in some way paid off his debt. If he is not manly, it has 
a powerful influence in making him a pauper for life. 
We say, then, that the religious paper which declares 
that the influence of charitable aid is the same as pa- 
rental is not candid. It knows better and ought to be 
ashamed of itself. 

More plausable, and more candid without doubt, is a 
correspondent of a secular paper who compares the stu- 
dent at West Point with the charity student. At West 
Point, a young man receives not only his tuition, but his 
support, without charge ; and the influence of this educa- 
tion is not regarded as a pauperizing one. On the con- 



The Curse of Pauperism. 235 

trary, it is looked upon as a most honorable and stimu- 
lating one. Now, why should not an education bestowed 
by the Government have the same effect upon the mind 
of the recipient as one bestowed by the gifts of the be- 
nevolent ? We may state as a fact that it does not, and 
that everybody is conscious that it does not. We may 
assume, therefore, that there is a sound reason for this 
difference in the facts. The Government thinks it worth 
its money to have an educated body of men, learned in 
the art of war, to be always ready for service. This body 
of men, in surrendering themselves to discipline, and 
holding themselves ready for what is expected of them, 
have the consciousness of rendering an equivalent for 
what they receive. They are ready to pay their debt in 
the only way in which it is desired to be paid, or can be 
paid. The aid they have received is in no possible sense 
a charity. It is given by the country for a considera- 
tion ; it is accepted by the student who perfectly under- 
stands the nature of the equivalent he renders. 

There are those, undoubtedly, who would undertake 
to point out a parallel between the church and the Gov- 
ernment, and to maintain that the young man who gives 
himself to the church renders an equivalent for all the 
church may do for him, in preparing him for service. 
We are not, however, talking about what may or might 
be, or what ought to be. We are talking about what is, 
and the simple fact is that the aid given to the students 
for the ministry is, and is felt to be, charitable aid. It 
carries no such self-respect with it as is entertained by 
the son who is educated by his father's money, in the 
enjoyment of a heaven-bestowed right, and no West 
Point pride, bred in an institution that takes no note of 
rich or poor, but identifies itself with the governmental 
interest and honor. 

Whatever we may have written upon this subject, first 



236 Every-Day Topics, 

or last — and we have written a good deal upon it — we 
have had at heart the interest of the Christian ministry. 
The body is disgraced by a large and not rapidly dimin- 
ishing mass of men who occupy in their parishes the 
position of paupers. How and when they became 
willing to be the constant recipients of gifts we do not 
know. 

We do not think they are the sons of men who were 
able to give them an education. We do not think they 
are men who wrought out their own education. We 
have no doubt that they are men who began by being 
helped, and who, to the disgrace of their profession, 
have remained willing to be recipients of charity from 
year to year. If there is a man in this world who 
should be in independent circumstances it is the Christian 
teacher. Generous support is a matter of right, and any 
minister who will consent to receive the payment for his 
work with even the smell of charity upon it, is a pauper. 
This is what we ask for — a body of men who hate char- 
ity as it relates to themselves, who are u touchy " as it 
concerns their business rights, and who compel their 
parishes to understand that their money has its equiva- 
lent in ministerial work as truly as in any work. This, 
too, is what we ask for — a body of young men who will 
be willing to wait five years that they may earn money 
rather than touch a dollar of ct help" — a body that will 
enter the pulpit mortgaged to no society of old women 
of either sex, and with a sincere hatred of all the in- 
fluences that tend to degrade their profession in the eyes 
of a practical business world. And we cannot conceive 
how anybody can find fault with these views and wishes 
and motives of ours, unless they touch to consciousness 
a pauper spirit within himself. 



The Curse of Pauperism. 237 



The Dead-Beat Nuisance. 

We hear a great deal of the " tramp nuisance," but 
this is very largely confined to the country. Men out of 
work, with no families to tie them to any particular spot, 
and men demoralized by army experiences, who would 
not work if they could, added to the great pauperized 
mass that is afloat at all times, tramp from town to town, 
and beg or steal— according to their depth of degrada- 
tion — to eke out their miserable and meaningless lives. 
But there is another nuisance confined mainly to the 
cities, of which the country knows but little, that grows 
larger and larger with each passing month. The dead- 
beat is a product of the town, and harder to handle and 
cure than the tramp. 

The processes by which the dead-beat is made are 
various. A young man of bad habits goes on to worse, 
until, as business becomes slack, he is discharged. From 
that day forth his clothes grow shabby. He begins to 
borrow from those who knew him in better days, with 
the promise and, at first, with the purpose of paying ; 
but at last he wears out his friends, and begins to prey 
upon society at large. He has no resource but borrow- 
ing — borrowing on the basis of any story that he can 
invent. He wants money to bury his wife, his child, to 
feed a starving family, to get to some place where he has 
friends. Many pretend to belong in the South, and are 
only anxious to get back. Many in New York have just 
come from the South, their trunks pawned for passage- 
money and they want to get to Boston. Some are just 
from a hospital, where they have for a long time been 
ill. They have been dismissed without money, and 
want to reach their friends. The ingenious lies that are 
peddled about New York, in any single day, by men and 



238 Every-Day Topics. 

women fairly well dressed, for the purpose of extorting 
from sympathetic and benevolent people, sums varying 
from one dollar to twenty-five dollars, would make a series 
of narratives quite sufficient to set up a modern novelist. 
So earnestly and consistently are these stories told that 
it is next to impossible to realize that they are not true ; 
yet we suppose that the experience of the general public, 
like all the private experience with which we are ac- 
quainted, proves that ninety-nine times in a hundred 
they are pure, or most impure inventions. 

The genteel female dead-beat is, perhaps, the hardest 
to get along with. She puts on airs and dignities. She 
talks of her former fortune, and of her expectations. 
She has sources of income at present shut up, but sure 
to be opened in time. Or she has a small income, terri- 
bly inadequate, at best, but not yet due. She wants 
something to bridge over the gulf that yawns between 
the last dollar and the next. Sometimes she lubricates 
her speech with tears, but dignity, and great self-respect- 
fulness, and a beautiful show of faith in God and man, 
are her principal instruments ; and it takes a purse that 
shuts like a steel trap to withstand her appeals. Some 
of these women selfishly stay at home, or in some nice 
boarding-house, and push out their children, and even 
their young and well-educated daughters, to do their 
borrowing for them. One whom we know — confessedly 
a non-attendant at any church— rails at the church for 
not supporting her. " Pretty followers of Jesus Christ ! " 
she thinks the church members are. 

The moment a man begins to lie for the purpose of 
getting money, or for the purpose of excusing himself 
for the non-payment of a debt, that moment he changes 
from a man to a dead-beat. We thus have dead-beats 
in business, as well as out of business — men who " shin" 
from day to day, and never know in the morning how 



The Curse of Pauperism, 239 

they are to get through. They live constantly by expe- 
dients. Of course, it cannot take long to reduce them 
to dead-beats of the most disgraceful stamp. 

A statement has been made by one of our most truth- 
ful public men, that there is in this city a house that har- 
bors the professional dead-beat, and furnishes him with 
romances to be used in the practical extortion of money. 
In this house there is a book kept, in which are recorded 
the names of benevolent men and women, with all their 
histories, traits, weak points, etc. These romances and 
this knowledge are imparted in consideration of a cer- 
tain percentage of the money collected through their 
use. Whether we call this organized beggary or organ- 
ized robbery, it matters little. The fact itself is enough 
to put every man upon his guard, and to make him de- 
cline (as a fixed rule, never to be deviated from, except 
in instances where his own personal knowledge warrants 
him in doing so) to give anything to anybody who comes 
to him with a story and an outstretched palm. Ninety- 
nine times in a hundred the story is a lie, and the teller 
of it a professional dead-beat, who deserves to be kicked 
from the door. Personally, we have never known a case 
in New York City of this sort of begging or borrowing 
that was not a fraud. The money loaned never comes 
back, or the beggar by some forgetfulness comes round 
again. 

The only safe way to manage these importunate and 
adroit scamps is either to turn them over to the investi- 
gation of some society, or to call a policeman. Fortu- 
nately, there is in a large number of houses the District 
telegraph, by the means of which a policeman can be sum- 
moned in a minute or two, without the visitor's knowl- 
edge. In many instances the policeman will know his 
man at first sight. Every dollar given to these leeches 
upon the social body is a direct encouragement to the 



240 Every-Day Topics. 

increase of the pauper population ; and, if the matter is 
still regarded carelessly, we shall, in twenty years, be as 
badly of! as Great Britain in this particular. What we 
give goes for rum, as a rule, and we not only foster idle- 
ness, but we nourish vice and crime. We need to make 
a dead set against tramps in the country and dead-beats 
in the city, if we wish to save our children from a reign 
of pauperism, only less destructive of the prosperity and 
the best interests of the country than the reign of war. 



TEMPERANCE. 

Temperance Education. 

BY the vote of our city Board of Education, on the 
sixth of November last, the English school-book, 
prepared by Benjamin Ward Richardson, called " The 
Temperance Lesson-Book," was adopted among the 
text-books which our city teachers are at liberty to use. 
We hope there are a good many teachers in the city who 
are willing to take up this book and teach it to their 
classes, for there is no doubt that boys go out into the 
dangers of the world lamentably ignorant of those that 
await them among the drinking-shops. We are sorry 
that this instruction must come into the schools through 
special text-books, though it is better that it come in 
this way than not at all. It must come, at last, into all 
competent schools, but when that point shall be reached, 
it will come in books on physiology and political econ- 
omy, in a natural and perfectly legitimate way. A spe- 
cial text-book on temperance may be well enough in the 
absence of the general books, in which the topic has its 
appropriate place and space ; but it is like a text-book 
on opium-eating. In short, the incompetence of the 
books on physiology and political economy has forced 
the friends of temperance into the use of this make-shift, 
which is surely a great deal better than nothing. 

There is, probably, no hallucination so obstinate as 
II 



242 Every-Day Topics. 

that which attributes to alcoholic drink a certain virtue 
which it never possessed. After all the influence of the 
pulpit and the press, after all the warning examples of 
drunkenness and consequent destruction, after all the 
testimony of science and experience, there lingers in the 
average mind an impression that there is something good 
in alcohol, even for the healthy man. Boys and young 
men do not shun the wine-cup as a poisoner of blood 
and thought, and the most dangerous drug that they can 
possibly handle ; but they have an idea that the temper- 
ance man is a fogy or a foe to a free social life, whose 
practices are ascetic, and whose warnings are to be 
laughed at and disregarded. Now, in alcohol, in its va- 
rious forms, we have a foe to the human race so subtile 
and so powerful that it destroys human beings by the 
million, vitiates all the mental processes of those who 
indulge in it, degrades morals, induces pauperism and 
crime in the superlative degree when compared with all 
other causes, corrupts the homes of millions and makes 
hells of them, and wastes the national resources more 
certainly and severely than war ; yet so little have the 
writers upon physiology and political economy regarded 
this vital and economical factor in human affairs, that 
the friends of temperance have been obliged to get up 
and push a special text -book upon it ! Verily, they 
must be a brilliant set of men ! Hereafter no text-book 
on either physiology or political economy should be 
adopted in any school in the country that does not com- 
petently treat of the alcohol question. 

It is a cruel thing to send a boy out into the world un- 
taught that alcohol in any form is fire and will certainly 
burn him if he puts it into his stomach. It is a cruel 
thing to educate a boy in such a way that he has no ade- 
quate idea of the dangers that beset his path. It is a 
mean thing to send a boy out to take his place in so- 



Temperance. 243 

ciety, without understanding the relations of temperance 
to his own safety and prosperity, and to the safety and 
prosperity of society. Of course, the great barrier be- 
tween the youth and correct knowledge — the great mys- 
tifier and misleader — is respectable society. This' is 
practically saying to the young, pretty universally, that 
wine is a good thing. Fine dinners are never given with- 
out it, and good men and women drink it daily* They 
do not get drunk, they may be conscientious and religi- 
ous, and many of them not only do not regard wine- 
drinking as harmful, but as positively beneficial. The 
boy and the young man see all this, and think, naturally, 
that those who have experience in drink should know 
better about its results than those who let drink alone. 

Now, what we want to do in our schools is to do away 
with the force of a pernicious example, and a long-cher- 
ished error, by making the children thoroughly intelli- 
gent on this subject of alcohol. They should be taught 
the natural effect of alcohol upon the processes of ani- 
mal life. 1st. They should be taught that it can add 
nothing whatever to the vital forces or to the vital tissues 
— that it never enters into the elements of structure, and 
that, in the healthy organism, it is always a burden or a 
disturbing force. 2d. They should be taught that it inva- 
riably disturbs the operation of the brain, and that the 
mind can get nothing from alcohol of help that is to be 
relied upon. 3d. They should be taught that alcohol 
inflames the baser passions, blunts the sensibilities, and 
debases the feelings. 4th. They should be taught that 
an appetite for drink is certainly developed by those 
who use it, which is dangerous to life, destructive of 
health of body and peace of mind, and in millions of in- 
stances ruinous to fortune and to all the high interests 
of the soul. 5th. They should be taught that the crime 
and pauperism of society flow as naturally from alcohol 



244 Every-Day Topics. 

as any effect whatever naturally flows from its compe- 
tent cause. 6th. They should be taught that drink is 
the responsible cause of most of the poverty and want 
of the world. So long as six hundred million dollars are 
annually spent for drink in this country, every ounce of 
which was made by the destruction of bread, and not 
one ounce of which has ever entered into the sum of 
national wealth, having nothing to show for its cost but 
diseased stomachs, degraded homes, destroyed industry, 
increased pauperism, and aggravated crime, these boys 
should understand the facts and be able to act upon 
them in their first responsible conduct. 

The national wealth goes into the ground. If we could 
only manage to bury it without having it pass thitherward 
in the form of a poisonous fluid through the inflamed 
bodies of our neighbors and friends, happy should we be. 
But this great, abominable curse dominates the world. 
The tramp reminds us of it as he begs for a night's lodg- 
ing. The widow and the fatherless tell us of it as they 
ask for bread. It scowls upon us from the hovels and 
haunts of the poor everywhere. Even the clean, hard- 
working man of prosperity cannot enjoy his earnings 
because the world is full of misery from drink. The more 
thoroughly we can instruct the young concerning this 
dominating evil of our time, the better will it be for them 
and for the world. Let us use the " temperance lesson- 
book" wherever we may. Let parents demand that it 
shall be used, and particularly let all writers upon phy- 
siology and political economy for schools take up the 
subject of alcohol, and treat it so candidly, fully, and 
ably that their books shall no longer be commentaries 
on their own incompetency to fill the places whose func- 
tions they have assumed. 



Temperance. 245 



Social Drinking. 

A few weeks ago, a notable company of gentlemen 
assembled in the ample parlors of the venerable and 
much beloved William E. Dodge, in this city, to listen to 
an essay by Judge Noah Davis on the relations of crime 
to the habit of intemperate drinking. The company was 
notable for its respectability, its number of public men, 
and the further fact that it contained many who were 
well known to be wine-drinkers — unattached to any tem- 
perance organization. No one could have listened to 
Judge Davis's disclosure of the facts of his subject with- 
out the conviction that it was a subject worthy the atten- 
tion of every philanthropist, every political economist, 
and every well-wisher of society present, whether tem- 
perance men or not. These facts, gathered from many 
quarters, and from the best authorities, w T ere most signi- 
ficant in fastening upon the use of alcohol the responsi- 
bility for most of the crimes and poverty of society. 
Some of them were astounding, even to temperance 
men themselves, and there were none present, we pre- 
sume, who did not feel that Judge Davis had done a rare 
favor to the cause of temperance in thus putting into its 
service his resources of knowledge and his persuasive 
voice. How many were convinced by the facts detailed 
that evening that they ought to give up the habit of so- 
cial drinking, we cannot tell. The probabilities are that 
none were so moved, for this habit of social drinking, or 
rather the considerations that go with it, are very des- 
potic. The idea that a man cannot be hospitable with- 
out the offer of wine to his guests is so fixed in the minds 
of most well-to-do people in this city that they will per- 
mit no consideration to interfere with it. People in the 
country, in the ordinary walks of life, have no concep- 



246 Every -Day Topics. 

tion of the despotic character of this idea. There are 
literally thousands of respectable men in New York who 
would consider their character and social standing seri- 
ously compromised by giving a dinner to a company of 
ladies and gentlemen without the offer of wine. It is not 
that they care for it themselves particularly. It is quite 
possible, or likely, indeed, that they would be glad, for 
many reasons, to banish the wine-cup from their tables, 
but they do not dare to do it. It is also true that such 
is the power of this idea upon many temperance men 
that they refrain altogether from giving dinners, lest their 
guests should feel the omission of wine to be a hardship 
and an outrage upon the customs of common hospitality. 

We have called these things to notice for a special 
reason. The company of wine-drinkers who made up 
so large a portion of the number that filled Mr. Dodge's 
rooms on the occasion referred to must have been pro- 
foundly impressed by the revelations and arguments of 
Judge Davis. They could not have failed to feel that by 
these revelations they had been brought face to face with 
a great duty — not, perhaps, the duty of stopping social 
drinking, and all responsible connection with it, but the 
duty of doing something to seal the fountains of this 
drink which has contributed so largely to the spread of 
crime and poverty and misery. A man must, indeed, 
be a brute who can contemplate the facts of intemper- 
ance without being moved to remedy them. They are too 
horrible to contemplate long at a time, and every good 
citizen must feel that the world cannot improve until, in' 
some measure, the supplies of drink are dried up. 

Our reason for writing this article is to call attention 
to the fact that there is something about this habit of 
social wine -drinking that kills the motives to work for 
temperance among those who suffer by coarse and de- 
structive habits of drink. Temperance is very rarely 



Temperance. 2Afi 

directly labored for by those who drink wine. As a rule, 
with almost no exceptions at all, the man who drinks 
wine with his dinner does not undertake any work 
to keep his humble neighbors temperate. As a rule, 
too, the wine-drinking clergyman says nothing about 
intemperance in his pulpit, when it is demonstrably the i 
most terrible scourge that afflicts the world. There 
seems to be something in the touch of wine that para- 
lyzes the ministerial tongue, on the topic of drink. 

We fully understand the power of social influence to 
hold to the wine-cup as the symbol of hospitality. It is 
one of the most relentless despotisms from which the 
world suffers, and exactly here is its worst result. We 
do not suppose that a very large number of drunkards 
are made by wine drunk at the table, in respectable 
homes. There is a percentage of intemperate men 
made undoubtedly here, but perhaps the worst social 
result that comes of this habit is its paralyzing effect 
upon reform — its paralyzing effect upon those whose 
judgments are convinced, and whose wishes for society 
are all that they should be. It is only the total abstainer 
who can be relied upon to work for temperance — who 
ever has been relied upon to work for temperance ; and 
of Mr. Dodge's company of amiable and gentlemanly 
wine-drinkers, it is safe to conclude that not one will 
join hands with him in temperance labor — with Judge 
Davis's awful facts sounding in his ears — who does not 
first cut off his own supplies. 

The Way we Waste. 

One of the facts brought prominently before the world 
during the last few years is, that France is rich. The 
ease with which she has recovered from the disastrous 
war with Prussia, and the promptness with which she has 



248 Every-Day Topics. 

met, not only her own, but Prussia's enormous expenses 
in that war, have surprised all her sister nations. Every 
poor man had his hoard of ready money, which he was 
anxious to lend to the State. How did he get it ? How 
did he save it ? Why is it that, in a country like ours, 
where wages are high and the opportunities for making 
money exceptionally good, such wealth and prosperity 
do not exist ? These are important questions at this time 
with all of us. 

Well, France is an industrious nation, it is said. But 
is not ours an industrious nation too ? Is it not, indeed, 
one of the most hard-working and energetic nations in 
the world ? We believe it to be a harder-working nation 
than the French, with not only fewer holidays, but no 
holidays at all, and with not only less play, but almost 
no play at all. It is said, too, that France is a frugal na- 
tion. They probably have the advantage of us in this ; 
yet, to feed a laboring man and to clothe a laboring man 
and his family there must be a definite, necessary ex- v 
penditure in both countries. The difference in wages 
ought to cover the difference in expenses, and probably 
does. If the American laborer spends twice as much, 
or three times as much, as the French, he earns twice 
or three times as much ; yet the American laborer lays 
up nothing, while the French laborer and small farmer 
have money to lend to their Government. Their old 
stockings are long and are full. The wine and the silk 
which the French raise for other countries must be more 
than counterbalanced by our exported gold, cotton, and 
breadstuffs, so that they do not have any advantage over 
us, as a nation, in what they sell to other nations ? We 
shall have to look farther than this for the secret we are 
after. 

There lies a book before us, written by Dr. William 
Hargreaves, entitled, "Our Wasted Resources." We 



Temperance, 249 

wish that the politicians and political economists of this 
country could read this book, and ponder well its shock- 
ing revelations. They are revelations of criminal waste 
— the expenditure of almost incalculable resources for 
that which brings nothing, worse than nothing, in return. 
There are multitudes of people who regard the temper- 
ance question as one of morals alone. The men who 
drink say simply, " We will drink what we please, and 
it's nobody's business. You temperance men are pesti- 
lent fellows, meddlesome fellows, who obtrude your tup- 
penny standard of morality upon us, and we do not want 
it, and will not accept it. Because you are virtuous, 
shall there be no more cakes and ale ? " Very well, let 
us drop it as a question of morality. You will surely 
look at it with us as a question of national economy and 
prosperity ; else, you can hardly regard yourselves as 
patriots. We have a common interest in the national 
prosperity, and we can discuss amicably any subject on 
this common ground. 

France produces its own wine and drinks mainly 
cheap wine. It is a drink which, while it does them no 
good, according to the showing of their own physicians, 
does not do them harm enough to interfere with their in- 
dustry. Their drinking wastes neither life nor money as 
ours does, and they sell in value to other countries more 
than they drink themselves. During the year 1870, in 
our own State of New York, there were expended by 
consumers for liquor more than one hundred and six mil- 
lions of dollars, a sum which amounted to nearly two- 
thirds of all the wages paid to laborers in agriculture and 
manufactures, and to nearly twice as much as the re- 
ceipts of all the railroads in the State, the sum of the 
latter being between sixty-eight and sixty-nine millions, 
The money of our people goes across the bar all the time 
faster than it is crowded into the wickets of all the rail- 
11* 



250 Every-Day Topics. 

road stations of the State, and where does it go ? What 
is the return for it ? Diseased stomachs, aching heads, 
discouraged and slatternly homes, idleness, gout, crime, 
degradation, death. These, in various measures, are ex- 
actly what we get for it. We gain of that which is good, 
nothing — no uplift in morality, no increase of industry, 
no accession to health, no growth of prosperity. Our 
State is full of tramps, and every one is a drunkard. 
There is demoralization everywhere, in consequence of 
this wasteful stream of fiery fluid that constantly flows 
down the open gullet of the State. 

But our State is not alone. The liquor bill of Penn- 
sylvania during 1870 was more than sixty-five millions 
of dollars, a sum equal to one -third of the entire agri- 
cultural product of the State. Illinois paid more than 
forty-two millions and Ohio more than fifty-eight mil- 
lions. Massachusetts paid more than twenty-five mil- 
lions, a sum equal to five-sixths of her agricultural pro- 
ducts, while the liquor bill of Maine was only about four 
millions and a quarter. Mr. Hargreaves takes the fig- 
ures of Massachusetts and Maine to show how a prohib- 
itory law does, after all, reduce the drinking ; but it is 
not our purpose to argue this question. 

What we desire to show is, that, with an annual ex- 
penditure of $600,000,000 for liquors in the United 
States — and all the figures we give are based upon offi- 
cial statistics — it should not be wondered at that the 
people are poor. Not only this vast sum is wasted ; not 
only the capital invested is diverted from good uses, and 
all the industry involved in production taken from bene- 
ficent pursuits, but health, morality, respectability, in- 
dustry and life are destroyed. Sixty thousand Americans 
annually lie down in a drunkard's grave. It were better 
to bring into the field and shoot down sixty thousand of 
our young men every year, than to have them go through 






Temperance. 251 

all the processes of disease, degradation, crime, and de- 
spair through which they inevitably pass. 

With six hundred millions of dollars saved to the 
country annually, how long would it take to make these 
United States rich not only, but able to meet, without 
disturbance and distress, the revulsions in business to 
which all nations are liable ? Here is a question for the 
statesman and the politician. Twenty-five years of ab- 
solute abstinence from the consumption of useless, and 
worse than useless, liquors, would save to the country 
fifteen billions of dollars, and make us the richest na- 
tion on the face of the globe. Not only this sum — be- 
yond the imagination to comprehend — would be saved, 
but all the abominable consequences of misery, disease, 
disgrace, crime, and death, that would flow from the 
consumption of such an enormous amount of poisonous 
fluids, would be saved. And yet temperance men are 
looked upon as disturbers and fanatics ! And we are 
adjured not to bring temperance into politics ! And 
this great transcendent question of economy gets the go- 
by, while we hug our little issues for the sake of party 
and of office ! Do we not deserve adversity ? 



DOMESTIC ECONOMY. 

Regulated Production. 

TN a recent number of The Popular Science Monthly \ 
■*■ we find an important and suggestive article from 
the pen of O. B. Bunce, which attempts to enforce the 
policy of " regulated production." There is no question 
that the popular doctrine that the supply is always reg- 
ulated by the demand, and that demand will always 
elicit supply, does not work with the requisite nicety 
or sensitiveness. A demand springs up, let us say, 
for paper. Immediately hundreds of mills start into 
action, each anxious to do its utmost to meet that de- 
mand with supply. They are operated night and day. 
and before they can feel the subsidence of the demand, 
the market is glutted. Then the mills are reduced to 
half time, or the gates are shut down altogether. Thou- 
sands of workmen and workwomen are either reduced in 
wages, or deprived of all wages ; and then, of course, 
comes distress. They cease to be consumers of any- 
thing but the bare necessaries of life, and thus every in- 
terest with which they hold relations is made to suffer 
with them. They buy no cloth, they live in the cheapest 
quarters, they drop all luxuries, and their over-produc- 
tion becomes, in every respect, a popular disaster. The 
demand brought the supply, but the supply for a year 
was produced in six months. 



Domestic Economy. 253 

We all remember with what opposition the introduc- 
tion of labor-saving machinery was met in England, 
The laboring classes had an instinct that there was some- 
where in it mischief for them. In this country less op- 
position has been manifested, because the labor market, 
until within a few years, has not been over-supplied. In 
the development of a new realm there has been enough 
for everybody to do. It was not long ago in this coun- 
try that the instincts of labor began to apprehend trou- 
ble from over-production. The labor-saving machinery 
was all invented, however, and in use, and the only rem- 
edy that seemed to offer was a reduction of the hours 
of labor — the shortening of the day's work. This could 
not work well, because it was not universal, and it was 
a clumsy resort in every respect. No manufacturer, 
paying a fixed sum for eight hours' work, could compete 
with another who paid only the same sum for ten, eleven 
and twelve hours' work. The matter got into the hands 
of demagogues, guilds and societies have endeavored to 
control the capitalists, and there has grown out of it a 
long train of mischiefs. 

Of this one fact, all men at this time have come to be 
well aware, viz., that we have the machinery and the 
labor for producing more of the ordinary materials re- 
quired in civilized life than we can sell. The further 
fact, to which we have already alluded, that " the law 
of demand and supply " works clumsily, and often dis- 
astrously, when left to itself, is also pretty definitely 
apprehended. There would seem, therefore, to be no 
alternative policy but that of " regulated production." 
That this is possible in limited spheres has already been 
abundantly proved. There is at this time in Massachu- 
setts a society of paper-makers who are intelligently and 
successfully "regulating" the production of their mills. 
They understand that if they run their mills day and 



254 Every -Day Topics. 

night they will produce paper in such quantities as to 
raise the price of stock and reduce the price of paper, 
as well as glut the market. So, by keeping the supply 
as nearly even with the demand as possible, they manage 
to run their mills half time — that is, only in the day- 
time — and to make a profit on which they and their em- 
ployes can live. This is what may be called " regulated 
production ; " and we know of no reason why the policy 
may not be adopted by every manufacturing interest in 
the country. 

The Government, of course, can have no voice in this 
regulation, but it can be of incalculable assistance in 
rendering it intelligent. It can ascertain — approximately, 
at least — how much paper, in all its varieties, how much 
muslin, how many shoes, how much woollen cloth, how 
many sewing-machines, reapers, ploughs, hoes, shovels, 
how much cutlery, how many hats, are made and sold 
in a single year. It can also ascertain the producing 
capacity of the respective groups of manufactories, and 
thus reduce to the simplest sum in arithmetic the prob- 
lem of regulated production. This sum, intelligently 
ciphered out, nothing remains but honest co-operation, 
free and frank intercommunication, and fraternal loyalty. 
Our American Silk Association, for instance, with its 
printed organ, its regular meetings, its thorough intelli- 
gence in all matters relating to the supply of the raw 
material and the demand for the manufactured product, 
can so regulate the production of silk that the whole in- 
terest can be kept in a healthy condition. 

Mr. Bunce cites the combination of the coal companies, 
which recently exploded, with such disastrous results, as 
a perfectly legitimate one, provided it had been entered 
into in order to prevent an over-production of coal. We 
heartily coincide in this opinion, and presume to add 
that if this had been the only motive of the combination 



Domestic Economy, 255 

it would not have exploded. The combination to pre- 
vent an over-production is not only legitimate — it is nec- 
essary. The attempt to force prices and profits on coal, 
in order to sustain a speculation in railroad stocks, or to 
bolster up roads that have no legitimate basis, was what 
burst the combination. Such evils will always correct 
themselves, though, in the correction, they inflict great 
disasters. The consumers of Pennsylvania cannot suffer 
without inflicting injury upon the manufacturers of New 
England and New York, who get their coal for less than 
it costs to produce it. Regulated production, with all 
that it promises, means, however, contentment with 
modest profits — a toning down of the old greed for sud- 
den and enormous wealth. It means also the entrance 
upon untried fields of enterprise, increased intelligence, 
and a development of skill. A limitation in quantity 
will bring an improvement in quality, every man trying 
his best to lead the market, or to make his market sure. 
We know that when a manufacturing interest is enor- 
mous, like that of iron or cotton cloth, it is difficult to 
associate the capital involved ; but it can be done — ought 
to be done — must be done. 

The Chinese in California. 

We have all had our laugh over Bret Harte's " Heathen 
Chinee," and particularly over the passage which de- 
clares "We are ruined by Chinese cheap labor," and 
which also contains the record of Ah Sin's discomfiture 
at the hand of Bill Nye, for the crime of holding more 
aces in his sleeve than his antagonist. Bill Nye's course 
of reasoning, and the "remedial agency" which he so 
promptly adopted in the case cited, form the finest sat- 
ire on the California enemies of the Chinaman that was 
ever uttered. We have all read, too, " Miss Malony on 



256 Every-Day Topics. 

the Chinese Question," which, though given in charac- 
teristic prose, is not inferior in its way to Mr. Harte's 
poem. These two satirical and humorous productions 
have in them a vast amount of truth and common sense. 
In the latter, Mrs. Dodge touches the question of na- 
tional prejudice, and in the former, Mr. Harte deals 
with the question of industrial and political economy. 

A few months ago we published two articles on the 
Chinese in California. One of them, written by a lady, 
was a record of personal experience in the employment 
of Chinese servants. The other treated of the general 
subject of Chinese immigration, in its social, industrial 
and political aspects. We have waited for a reply to 
these communications, because there are always two 
sides to every question ; and we supposed that the 
Chinese would have friends enough who were willing to 
speak a just, if not a kind word for them. We have 
waited up to the time of writing this article, in vain, and 
we propose to say a word for ourselves — such a word as 
a man may say on general principles, with perhaps an 
inadequate knowledge of facts. 

The Irish immigrant — we mean only the ignorant and 
laboring Irish immigrant — has always hated any race and 
any nationality that has been brought into competition 
with him in common labor. The negro has always been 
the Irishman's bete noir, quite independently of his color. 
It seems to be natural for an Irishman to hate a negro, 
and the hatred comes entirely from the fact that he re- 
gards him as a competitor in common labor. Here^ in 
New York, we have had a small specimen of the hatred 
of an Irishman for an Italian — not that the Italian has 
base blood in him, or is his enemy in matters of religion, 
for the Italian is his Catholic brother, and the fellow- 
countryman of his Pope. He is simply jealous of him 
as a laborer ; and the Italians would only need to settle 



Domestic Economy. 2$j 

in New York in sufficiently large numbers to develop 
this jealousy into violent and disgraceful manifestations. 
We state these facts simply in illustration of the way in 
which the Irishman would naturally regard the importa- 
tion of 150,000 Chinese laborers at San Francisco. With 
his nature, and his adoption of the idea, either that he 
has a right to all the common labor that is to be done, 
or that any other common laborer will interfere with his 
prosperity, it would be impossible for him to look upon 
Chinese immigration with anything but disfavor. This 
disfavor he would manifest in the way in which he mani- 
fests it toward the negro and the Italian. " We are 
ruined by Chinese cheap labor," he would say, and, 
therefore, he would " go for that heathen Chinee." 

So, whatever of Irish opposition there may be in San 
Francisco to the importation of the Chinaman, and 
whatever of maltreatment the latter may suffer from 
Irish boots and Irish influence, are sufficiently explained. 
The Irishman would be most unlike himself if he failed 
to look upon the Chinaman precisely as he looks upon 
the African and the laboring Italian. He does not op- 
pose him with brutal weapons because he is a heathen, 
for he would treat the Catholic Italian in the same way, 
under the same circumstances ; but because he and the 
Chinaman have the same thing to dispose of, viz.: com- 
mon labor. 

There is still another influence which is naturally hos- 
tile to the Chinaman. This influence is not so powerful 
here as it would be England. We allude to the influence 
of the trades unions. The members of these societies 
are, by their institutions and policy, necessarily the foes 
of any body of laborers who remain outside of their lines 
and beyond their control. It is not necessary that this 
body of laborers should be Chinese. It is only neces- 
sary that they should be laborers who choose to be inde* 



258 Every-Day Topics. 

pendent of them. This fact is illustrated every day in 
the year in New York. All the persuasives are employed 
and all the penalties are imposed which can be used 
with safety to keep men from working in " wild shops, " 
whose proprietors choose to manage their own business. 
The abuse of the tongue, social ostracism, and, in too 
many instances, violence, are resorted to, to bring and 
hold men within their own ranks. It is not the Irishman, 
the Italian, the Chinaman, or the negro, that the trades 
unions care for, as such, but it is the independent la- 
borer, who works at whatever, and at whatever wages, 
he may choose. Now it is impossible that these organi- 
zations should regard with favor the importation of an 
alien population, possessing rare ingenuity and adap- 
tiveness to a wide circle of industry, yet entirely outside 
of their possible control. 

We are not upon the ground, and it is impossible for 
us to judge how much of the enmity to the Chinese that 
reigns at San Francisco is attributable to the two causes 
that have been mentioned. That enough of it to make 
these Chinese very uncomfortable and unsafe is to be 
traced to these causes, nobody can doubt, though he 
may live on the other side of the globe. If it were all 
wiped out, we fancy that the " heathen Chinee " would 
be very comfortable in California. 

It is tossed in the teeth of the Chinaman that he is a 
heathen, that he is an opium-eater, that he sends his 
money home, that he does not bring his wife and family 
with him, but does bring prostitutes ; that he is filthy, 
that the quarters he inhabits are breeders of disease, 
that he is a gambler, etc. It is a fair question to ask, in 
the face of these charges, whether the treatment meted 
out to this heathen has been such that he sees a marked 
superiority of Christianity over heathenism. About how 
impressive is the Christian lesson imparted to a heathen 



Domestic Economy. 259 

by the unrebuked toe of a hoodlum's boot ? What would 
a heathen naturally think of a Christianity that greets 
him with a howl on his landing, and follows him with dis- 
criminating laws and regulations, and public contempt, 
and private, unhindered abuse during all the time of his 
residence ? The charge of heathenism is just a trifle ab- 
surd. And, again, if the Chinaman smokes opium, who 
drinks whiskey ? If he has prostitutes, whose unrebuked 
example does he follow ? If he sends money home, it 
is precisely what the Irish have been doing, in the most 
filial, brotherly and praiseworthy way for the last cen- 
tury. If he comes to California without his wife, he does 
simply what tens of thousands of Californians have done 
since immigration into the State began. If he is a gam- 
bler, how long is it since gambling went out of fashion 
in California ? If his quarters are filthy, why does not 
the health board, or why do not the city authorities, at- 
tend to their duties ? 

We ask these questions not because we suppose they 
decide anything, but because, in our ignorance, we 
would like to know. In the East, the prejudice against 
our heathen brother John in California seems a little un- 
reasonable, and we want more light. We have been in 
the habit of welcoming all other nationalities. We are 
strangely insensitive to the importation of thousands of 
criminals and scamps and scalawags from Europe, and 
we cannot yet feel sure that the importation of the 
Chinaman is not a better thing, on the whole. He cer- 
tainly is industrious, he minds his own business, and, so 
far as we have seen him here, he does an honest day's 
work, which is more than can be said of a good many 
Christian laborers whom we have around us. Of one 
thing, at least, we are sure. No people can hold a large 
body of men in contempt, and regard them with hatred, 
and treat them like beasts, without demoralizing them- 



260 Every-Day Topics. 

selves. That thing has been tried, and tried in this 
country, too. The Californians cannot afford to have the 
Chinaman with them, unless they can treat him like a 
man. They must either do this, or the Chinaman must 
go. To hold a fellow-man in fixed contempt, to spit upon 
him unrebuked, simply because he is of another race, or 
is supposed, in the competitions of life, to interfere with 
one's prosperity, is simply to lapse from Christianity into 
barbarism. And that, in its own time, will produce re- 
sults in which the Chinese will not be interested, except 
as observers. 



SOCIAL FACTS, FORCES AND REFORMS. 

Acting under Excitement. 

THERE is great fear, on the part of some amiable 
persons who write for the public, lest, in certain 
excited movements of reform, there should be those who 
will take steps for which they will be sorry. They argue, 
from this, that it is not best to have any excitement at 
all, and especially that nothing should be done under 
excitement. It so happens, however, that the path of 
progress has always been marked by sudden steps up- 
ward and onward. There are steady growth and steady 
going, it is true, but the tendency to rut-making and 
routine are so great in human nature, that it is often only 
by wide excitements that a whole community is lifted 
and forwarded to a new level. Men often get into the 
condition of pig-iron. They pile up nicely in bars. They 
are in an excellent state of preservation. They certainly 
lie still, and though there is vast capacity in them for 
machinery, and cutlery, and agricultural implements — 
though they contain measureless possibilities of spindles 
and spades — there is nothing under heaven but fire that 
can develop their capacity and realize their possibilities. 
There are communities that would never do anything 
but rot, except under excitement. A community often 
gets into a stolid, immobile condition, which nothing 
but a public excitement can break up. This condition 



262 Every-Day Topics. 

may relate to a single subject, or to many subjects. It 
may relate to temperance, or to a church debt. Now, it 
is quite possible that a man under excitement will do the 
thing that he has always known to be right, and be sorry 
for it or recede from it afterward ; but the excitement 
was the only power that would ever have started him on 
the right path, or led him to stop in the wrong one. It is 
all very well to say that it would be a great deal better 
for a drunkard, coolly, after quiet deliberation and a ra- 
tional decision, to resolve to forsake his cups than to 
take the same step under the stimulus of social excite- 
ment and the persuasions of companionship and fervid 
oratory; but does he ever do it? Sometimes, possibly, 
but not often. Without excitement and a great social 
movement, very little of temperance reform has ever 
been effected. Men are like iron : to be moulded they 
must be heated ; and to say that there should be no ex- 
citement connected with a great reform, or that a reform 
is never to be effected through excitement, is to ignore 
the basilar facts of human nature and human history. 

At the present time there is a great temperance reform 
in progress. Men are taking the temperance pledge by 
tens of thousands. They go around with glad faces and 
with ribbons in their button-holes. They sing their 
songs of freedom from the power that has so long and so 
cruelly enslaved them. It is said, of course : " Oh, this 
will not last. It is only a nine days' wonder. Many of 
these people are now drinking in secret, and soon the 
most of them will be back in their old courses." The 
most of them — possibly. It is not probable, however, 
that the most of them will recede. Suppose half of them 
remain true to their pledges; does not that pay? We 
should have had none of them without the excitement, 
and to have had a great mass of brutal men, who have 
long disgraced and abused their wives and children, 



Social Facts, Forces and Reforms. 263 

sober for a month, or for six months, was surely a good 
thing. It was at least a ray of sunshine in a great multi- 
tude of dark lives. The point we make, is, that the al- 
ternative of a reform through popular excitement is no 
reform at all. And we make the further point that a 
man who will not sympathize with a reform because of 
the excitement that accompanies it, is, ninety-nine times 
in a hundred, a man who does not sympathize with the 
reform on any ground ; and the hundredth man is usu- 
ally an impracticable ass. 

Let us take this matter of paying church debts by 
what has become known as the Kimball method. A 
church builds a house of worship. It costs more than 
the original estimate, or some important members have 
failed in the expected or pledged subscription, or, worse 
than all, debt has been incurred with the eyes open and 
by intent. It has been carried along for years, the 
whole organization groaning with the burden. To a few 
it has become intolerable. They see the .church dwin- 
dling. They see strangers frightened away by this skele- 
ton in the closet ; they see their pastor growing gray and 
careworn or utterly breaking down, and, knowing that 
nothing stands in the way of the usefulness and happi- 
ness of their church but the debt, they cast about for 
help. We will say that in most instances the church is 
able to pay the debt, provided every man will do his 
duty ; but it so happens that every man will not do his 
duty, except under some sort of social excitement, which 
Mr. Kimball or his helper supplies. Now, it is simply a 
question between paying a debt and not paying it at all. 
It is not practically a question between paying in one 
way or another. 

This method has been tried many times, with the most 
gratifying success. In one brief half-day, by means of 
everybody doing his part under the influence of elo- 



264 Every-Day Topics. 

quence and social excitement, debts have been lifted 
and churches made free. Churches and congregations 
have sung and wept over their success, and with the joy 
that came of duty done and sacrifice made for the Mas- 
ter. Just here steps in the critic. He has known noth- 
ing of the burden that the church has carried. He knows 
nothing of the happiness that has come from the sacri- 
fices made, or of the hopes that have been born of them. 
He only knows that it is probable that men and women, 
under the excitement of the occasion, have subscribed 
in some instances more than they could afford to sub- 
scribe. Therefore, in the opinion of the critic, a public 
excitement for the purpose of securing the payment of a 
church debt is wrong. The critic does not take into 
account the fact that without the excitement the debt 
not only would not, but could not be paid. He does not 
take into account the fact that the willing part of the 
church has been most unjustly burdened with this debt 
for years, and that nothing under heaven but an exciter 
ment will stir the unwilling part of the church to do its 
duty. Of course he does not take into account the fur- 
ther fact that no sacrifice is too great to the man who 
appreciates the sacrifice that has been made for him, 
and for which he can only make a poor return, at best. 

To the critics of this method of paying church debts 
who object to it on account of its profanation of the Sab- 
bath, no better reply can be made than that of one who 
found occasion to defend himself in their presence. 
" We are told," said he, " that it was permissible in the 
olden time for a man to relieve his ass on the Sabbath 
day, when the animal had fallen into a ditch, and I am 
only trying to relieve a multitude of men and women 
who have been asses enough to stumble into a church 
debt." The answer is a good one, and justifies itself. 



Social Facts, Forces and Reforms, 265 



The Cure for Gossip. 

Everybody must talk about something. The poor 
fellow who was told not to talk for the fear that people 
would find out that he was a fool, made nothing by the 
experiment. He was considered a fool because he did 
not talk. On some subject or another, everybody must 
have something to say, or give up society. Of course, 
the topics of conversation will relate to the subjects of 
knowledge. If a man is interested in science, he will 
talk about science. If he is an enthusiast in art, he will 
talk about art. If he is familiar with literature, and is 
an intelligent and persistent reader, he will naturally 
put forward literary topics in his conversation. So with 
social questions, political questions, religious questions. 
Out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh. 
That of which the mind is full — that with which it is fur- 
nished — will come out in expression. 

The very simple reason why the world is full of gossip, 
is, that those who indulge in it have nothing else in them. 
They must interest themselves in something. They 
know nothing but what they learn from day to day, 
in intercourse with, and observation of, their neighbors. 
What these neighbors do — what they say — what happens 
to them in their social and business affairs — what they 
wear — these become the questions of supreme interest. 
The personal and social life around them — this is the 
book under constant perusal, and out of this comes that 
pestiferous conversation which we call gossip. The 
world is full of it ; and in a million houses, all over this 
country, nothing is talked of but the personal affairs of 
neighbors. All personal and social movements and con- 
cerns are arraigned before this high court of gossip, are 
retailed at every fireside, are sweetened with approval or 
12 



266 Every-Day Topics. 

embittered by spite, and are gathered up as the com- 
mon stock of conversation by the bankrupt brains that 
have nothing to busy themselves with but tittle-tattle. 

The moral aspects of gossip are bad enough. It is a 
constant infraction of the Golden Rule ; it is full of all 
uncharitableness. No man or woman of sensibility 
likes to have his or her personal concerns hawked about 
and talked about ; and those who engage in this work 
are meddlers and busybodies who are not only doing 
damage to others — are not only engaged in a most un- 
neighborly office — but are inflicting a great damage upon 
themselves.' They sow the seeds of anger and animosity 
and social discord. Not one good moral result ever 
comes out of it. It is a thoroughly immoral practice, 
and what is worst and most hopeless about it is, that 
those who are engaged in it do not see that it is immoral 
and detestable. To go into a man's house, stealthily, 
when he is away from home, and overhaul his papers, 
or into a lady's wardrobe and examine her dresses, would 
be deemed a very dishonorable thing ; but to take up a 
man's or a woman's name, and besmirch it all over with 
, gossip — to handle the private affairs of a neighbor around 
a hundred firesides — why, this is nothing ! It makes con- 
versation. It furnishes a topic. It keeps the wheels of 
society going. 

Unhappily for public morals, the greed for personal 
gossip has been seized upon as the basis of a thrifty 
traffic. There are newspapers that spring to meet every 
popular demand. We have agricultural papers, scien- 
tific papers, literary papers, sporting papers, religious 
papers, political papers, and papers devoted to every 
special interest, great and small, that can be named, 
and, among them, papers devoted to personal gossip. 
The way in which the names of private men and women 
are handled by caterers for the public press, the way in 



Social Facts, Forces and Reforms. 267 

which their movements and affairs are heralded and dis- 
cusse'd, would be supremely disgusting were it not more 
disgusting that these papers find greedy readers enough 
to make the traffic profitable. The redeeming thing 
about these papers is, that they are rarely malicious 
except when they are very low down — that they season 
their doses with flattery. They find their reward in 
ministering to personal vanity. 

What is the cure for gossip ? Simply, culture. There 
is a great deal of gossip that has no malignity in it, 
Good-natured people talk about their neighbors because, 
and only because, they have nothing else to talk about. 
As we write, there comes to us the picture of a family of 
young ladies. We have seen them at home, we have 
met them in galleries of art, we have caught glimpses of 
them going from a bookstore, or a library, with a fresh 
volume in their hands. When we meet them, they are 
full of what they have seen and read. They are brim- 
ming with questions. One topic of conversation is drop- 
ped only to give place to another, in which they are 
interested. We have left them, after a delightful hour, 
stimulated and refreshed ; and during the whole hour not 
a neighbor's garment was soiled by so much as a touch. 
They had something to talk about. They knew some- 
thing, and wanted to know more. They could listen as 
well as they could talk. To speak freely of a neighbor's 
doings and belongings would have seemed an imperti- 
nence to them, and, of course, an impropriety. They 
had no temptation to gossip, because the doings of their 
neighbors formed a subject very much less interesting 
than those which grew out of their knowledge and their 
culture. 

And this tells the whole story. The confirmed gossip 
is always either malicious or ignorant. The one variety 
needs a change of heart and the other a change of pas- 



268 Every-Day Topics. 

ture. Gossip is always a personal confession either of 
malice or imbecility, and the young should not only 
shun it, but by the most thorough culture relieve them- 
selves from all temptation to indulge in it It is a 
low, frivolous, and too often a dirty business. There are 
country neighborhoods in which it rages like a pest. 
Churches are split in pieces by it. Neighbors are made 
enemies by it for life. In many persons it degenerates 
into a chronic disease, which is practically incurable. 
Let the young cure it while they may. 

The Philosophy of Reform. 

It is the habit of men who regard themselves as 
" radicals," in matters relating to reform, to look upon 
the Christian and the Christian Church as " conserv- 
ative, " when, in truth, the Christian is the only reformer 
in the world who can lay a sound claim to radicalism. 
The Church has lived for eighteen hundred years, and 
will live until the end of time, because it holds the only 
radical system of reform in existence, if for no other 
reason. The greatness of the founder of Christianity is 
conspicuously shown in his passing by social institu- 
tions as of minor and inconsiderable importance, and 
fastening his claims upon the individual. The reform 
of personal character was his one aim. With him, the 
man was great and the institution small. There was 
but one way with him for making a good society, and 
that was by the purification of its individual materials. 
There can be nothing more radical than this ; and there 
never was anything — there never will be anything — to 
take the place of it. It is most interesting and in- 
structive to notice how, one by one, every system of 
reform that has attempted to "cut under" Christian- 
ity has died out, leaving it a permanent possessor of the 



Social Facts, Forces and Reforms. 269 

field. The reason is that Christianity is radical. There 
is no such thing as getting below it. It is at the root of 
all reform, because it deals with men individually. 

We suppose that it is a matter of great wonder to 
some of our sceptical scientists that Christianity can live 
for a day. To them it is all a fable, and they look with 
either contempt or pity upon those who give it their 
faith and their devoted support. If they had only a 
little of the philosophy of which they believe themselves 
to possess a great deal, they would see that no system 
of religion can die which holds within itself the only 
philosophical basis of reform. A system of religion 
which carries motives within it for the translation of bad 
or imperfect character into a form and quality as divine 
as anything we can conceive, and which relies upon this 
translation for the improvement of social and political 
institutions, is a system which bears its credentials of 
authority graven upon the palms of its hands. There 
can be nothing better. Nothing can take the place of 
it. Until all sorts of reformers are personally reformed 
by it, they are only pretenders or mountebanks. They 
are all at work upon the surface, dealing with matters 
that are not radical. 

It is most interesting and instructive, we repeat, to 
observe how all the patent methods that have been 
adopted outside of, or in opposition to, Christianity, for 
the reformation of society, have, one after another, gone 
to the wall, or gone to the dogs. A dream, and a few 
futile or disastrous experiments, are all that ever come 
of them. Societies, communities, organizations, melt 
away and are lost, and all that remains of them is their 
history. Yet the men who originated them fancied that 
they were radicals, while they never touched the roots 
either of human nature or human society. The most 
intelligent of those who abjure Christianity have seen 



270 Every-Day Topics. 

all this, and have been wise enough not to undertake 
to put anything in its place. They content themselves 
with their negations, and leave the race to flounder along 
as it will. 

We suppose it is a matter of wonder to such men as 
these that Mr. Moody and Mr. Sankey can obtain such 
a following as they do. They undoubtedly attribute it 
to superstition and ignorance, but these reformers are 
simply eminent radicals after the Christian pattern, 
who deal with the motives and means furnished them 
by the one great radical reformer of the world — Jesus 
Christ himself. They are at work at the basis of 
things. To them, politics are nothing, denominations 
are nothing, organizations are nothing, or entirely sub- 
ordinate. Individual reform is everything. After this, 
organizations will take care of themselves. No good so- 
ciety can possibly be made out of bad materials, and 
when the materials are made good, the society takes a 
good form naturally, as a pure salt makes its perfect; 
crystal without superintendence. They are proving, 
day by day, what all Christian reformers have been 
proving for eighteen centuries, viz., that Christian re- 
form, as it relates to individual life and character, pos- 
sesses the only sound philosophical basis that can be 
found among reforms. Christian reform, with all its 
motives and methods, is found to be just as vital to-day 
as it ever was. It is the same yesterday, to-day, and 
forever. There are a great many dogmas of the Church 
whose truth, or whose importance, even if true, it would 
be difficult to prove ; but the great truths, that human- 
ity is degraded, and can only be elevated and purified 
by the elevation and purification of its individual con- 
stituents, are evident to the simplest mind. Men know 
that they are bad, and ought to be better ; and a mo- 
tive — or a series of motives to reformation, addressed 



Social Facts, Forces and Reforms. 271 

directly to this consciousness — is not long in achieving 
results. The radicalism of Christianity holds the secret 
of revivals, of the stability of the Church, of the growth 
and improvement of Christian communities. All things 
that are true are divine. There can be no one thing 
that is more divinely true than any other thing that is 
true. Christianity is divine, if for no other reason than 
that it holds and monopolizes the only radical and phil- 
osophical basis of reform. The criticisms of all those 
who ignore these facts are necessarily shallow and un- 
worthy of consideration — just as shallow and just as 
worthless, as the dogmatism inside the Church which at- 
tributes the power of Christianity to those things which 
are not sources of power at all. Christianity must live 
and triumph as a system of reform, because it goes to 
the roots of things, and because, by so doing, it proves 
itself to be divinely and eternally true. 

The Reconstruction of National Morality. 

A time of war is always a time of corruption. The 
earnest public is absorbed by public questions and pub- 
lic movements. Values are shifting and unsettled. Con- 
tracts are made in haste, and their execution escapes, in 
the distractions of the time, that scrutiny and criticism 
which they secure in calmer periods. There are ten 
thousand chances for undetected frauds at such a time 
which do not exist in the reign of peace. All the selfish 
elements of human nature spring into unwonted activity, 
and the opportunities for large profits and sudden wealth 
are made the most of. This is the case in all climes and 
countries. America does not monopolize the greed and 
mendacity of the world. Even in despotic Russia, with 
Siberia in the near distance and harsher punishments 
closer at hand, the contractor cannot keep his fingers 



272 Every- Day Topics. 

from his country's gold. Rank growths of extravagance 
spring into life ; artificial wants are nourished ; the old 
economies go out, and the necessities of a new style of 
living force men into schemes of profit from which they 
would shrink under other circumstances. The public 
conscience becomes debauched, and the public tone of 
morality debased. 

Upon results like these the uncorrupted men look 
with dismay or despair. Where is it all to end ? The 
nation is sick from heart to hand ; how can it be cured ? 
The answer is now, happily, not far to seek. A ring of 
rogues gets the metropolis into its hands. They rule it 
in their own interests. Their creatures are in every 
office. They reach their power out upon the State. 
With uncounted money, every dollar of which they 
have stolen, they control elections, bribe legislators, and 
buy laws that shall protect them and their plunder. 
They build club-houses, summer resorts, steamboats — 
all that can minister to their sensual delights, and find 
multitudes to fawn upon their power and pick up the 
crumbs of patronage that fall from their tables. But 
the day of reckoning comes to them, and the boastful 
leader who defiantly asks, " What are you going to do 
about it?" runs away. All these men are wanderers, 
self-exiled. Nay, they are prisoners to all intents and 
purposes — shut out from the only world which has any 
interest for them. There is not a man in Sing Sing who 
is not nearer home, who is any more shut away from 
home, than Tweed and his fellow-conspirators. Cor- 
ruption, once the courted goddess of New York City, is 
not to-day in the fashion. So much, at least, has been 
done. 

If we look out upon the country, we shall find the 
process of reformation going on. A gigantic interest, 
baleful in every aspect, pits itself against the demands 



Social Facts , Forces and Reforms. 273 

of the Government for revenue. Men who have held 
good positions in business circles stand confessed as 
cheats, tricksters, scoundrels. The whiskey rings that 
have defrauded the Government in untold millions are 
falling to pieces under the steady pressure of exposure, 
and stand revealed in all their shameful shamelessness. 
They appear before the bar of law and public opinion 
and plead guilty in squads — almost in battalions. And 
still the work goes on. Still, in the nature and tendency 
of things, it must go on, till all these festering centres of 
corruption are cauterized and healed. So with the Canal 
Ring, and so with corporation rings of all sorts all over 
the country. The tendencies of the time are toward 
reform. The attention of the country is crowded back 
from illegitimate sources of profit upon personal econ- 
omy and healthy industry. It is seen, at least, that cor- 
ruption does not pay, and that, in the end, it is sure of 
exposure. 

There is another set of evils that have grown naturally 
out of the influences of the war. Petty peculations have 
abounded. Wages have been reduced, and those em- 
ployers in responsible positions, whose style of living 
has been menaced or rendered impossible by the reduc- 
tion of their means, have been over-tempted to steal, or 
to attempt speculation with moneys held and handled in 
trust. Thief after thief is exposed, many of them men 
whose honesty has been undoubted, until all who are 
obliged to trust their interest in the hands of others 
tremble with apprehension. But this is one of those 
things which will naturally pass away. Every exposure 
is a terrible lesson — not only to employers, but to the 
employed. The former will be careful to spread fewer 
temptations in the way of their trusted helpers, by hold- 
ing them to a closer accountability, and the latter will 
learn that every step outside the bounds of integrity is 
12* 



274 Every-Day Topics. 

sure of detection in the end ; that the path of faithful- 
ness is the only possible path of safety and of peace. 
This is not the highest motive to correct action, it is 
true, but it will answer for those who are tempted to 
steal, and who are not actuated by a better. 

It will be evident that we are not alarmed or dis- 
couraged by the exposure of rascality in high places 
and low, which greet our eyes in almost every morning's 
newspaper. These exposures are the natural product 
of healthy reaction, the preliminary steps toward the 
national cure. So long as fraud, peculation, and defec- 
tion exist, the faster these exposures come the better. 
Every exposure is a preacher of righteousness, an evan- 
gel of reform. The more dangerous all rascality and 
infidelity to trust can be made to appear, the better for 
society. In any cutaneous disease, the more we see of 
it the better. It is before it appears, or when it is sunk 
from the surface, that it is most dangerous to the sources 
of life and the springs of cure. 

Double Crimes and One-Sided Laws. 

A little four-page pamphlet has recently fallen into 
our hands, entitled " Crimes of Legislation." Who wrote 
it, or where it came from, we do not know ; but it 
reveals a principle so important that it deserves more 
elaborate treatment and fuller illustration. ' These we 
propose to give it, premising, simply, that the word 
" crimes" is a misnomer, as it involves a malicious de- 
sign which does not exist. " Mistakes in Legislation " 
would be a better title . 

There are two classes of crimes. The first needs but 
one actor. When a sneak-thief enters a hall and steals 
and carries off an overcoat, or a man sits in his count- 
ing-room and commits a forgery, or a ruffian knocks a 



Social Facts ', Forces and Reforms. 275 

passenger down and robs him, he is guilty of a crime 
which does not necessarily need a confederate of any 
sort. The crime is complete in itself, and the single 
perpetrator alone responsible. The second class of 
crimes can only be committed by the consent or active 
aid of a confederate. When a man demands, in contra- 
vention of the usury laws, an exorbitant price for the 
use of money, his crime cannot be complete without the 
aid of the man to whom he lends his money. When a 
man sells liquor contrary to the law, it involves the con- 
sent and active co-operation of the party to whom he 
makes the sale. He could not possibly break the law 
without aid. The same fact exists in regard to a large 
number of crimes. They are two-sided crimes, and 
necessarily involve two sets of criminals. 

In the face of these facts, which absolutely dictate 
discriminative legislation that shall cover all the guilty 
parties, our laws have, with great uniformity, been one- 
sided for the double crime as well as for the single. 
The man who lends money at usurious rates is ac- 
counted the only guilty party in the transaction. The 
borrower may have come to him with a bribe in his 
hand to induce him to break the law — may have been 
an active partner in the crime — and still the lender is 
the only one accounted guilty and amenable to punish- 
ment. The man who sells intoxicating liquors contrary 
to law could never sell a glass, and would never buy 
one to sell, but for the bribe outheld in the- palm of 
his customer ; yet the law lays its hand only upon the 
seller. 

Now, if we look into the history of these one-sided 
laws for double crimes, we shall learn that they are 
precisely those which we find it almost, or quite, im- 
possible to enforce ; and it seems never to have been 
suspected that, so long as they are one-sided, there is 



276 Every-Day Topics. 

2l fatal flaw in them. Our legislators have seemed to 
forget that, if liquor is not bought, it will not be sold ; 
that if usurious rates for money are not tendered, they 
cannot possibly be exacted ; that if irregular or contin- 
gent fees are not offered to the prosecutors of real or 
doubtful claims, the prosecutors are without a motive to 
irregular action. So powerful is the sympathy of con- 
federacy in crime between these two parties, although the 
confederacy is not recognized by law, that it has been 
almost impossible to get convictions. The rum-buyer 
will never, if he can help it, testify against the rum- 
seller. Unless the victim of the usurer is a very mean 
man, he will keep his transactions to himself. It is 
really, among business men, a matter of dishonor for a 
borrower to resort to the usury law to escape the pay- 
ment of rates to which he had agreed, and it ought to 
be. 

Usury is a double crime, if it is a crime at all. Rum- 
selling contrary to law is a double crime, and no pro- 
hibitory law can stand, or even ought to stand, that 
does not hold the buyer to the same penalties that it 
holds the seller. The man who bribes the seller to 
break the law is as guilty as ttfe seller, and if the law 
does not hold him to his share of accountability, the 
law cannot be respected and never ought to be respected. 
It is a one-sided law, an unfair law, an unjust law. Men 
who are not able to reason it out, as we are endeavoring 
to do here, feel that there is something wrong about it ; 
and it is safe to predict that, until the moral sentiment 
of a State is up to the enactment of a two-sided law that 
shall cover a two-sided crime, no prohibitory law will 
accomplish the object for which it was constituted. 

Prostitution is one of the most notable, and one of 
the most horrible of the list of double crimes. It is 
always a double crime by its nature ; yet, how one- 



Social Facts, Forces and Reforms. 277 

sided are the laws which forbid it ! Is a poor girl, who 
has not loved wisely, and has been forsaken, the only 
one to blame when beastly men press round her with 
their hands full of bribes enticing her into a life of in- 
famy ? Yet she alone is punished, while they go scot 
free. And yet we wonder why prostitution is so preva- 
lent, and why our laws make no impression upon it ! 
Some ladies of our commonwealth have protested 
against a proposed law for some sort of regulation of 
prostitution — putting it under medical surveillance. And 
they are right. If men who frequent houses of prosti- 
tution are permitted to go forth from them to scatter 
their disease and their moral uncleanness throughout 
a pure community, then let the women alone. In a 
case like this, a mistake of legislation may amount to a 
crime. We do not object to medical surveillance, but 
it should touch both parties to the social sin. Xo law 
that does not do this will ever accomplish anything 
toward the cure of prostitution. We have some respect 
for Justice when she is represented blindfold, but when 
she has one eye open — and that one winking — she is 
a monster. 

Our whole system of treating double crimes with one- 
sided laws, our whole silly policy of treating one party 
to a double crime as a fiend, and the other party as an 
angel or a baby, has been not only inefficient for the 
end sought to be obtained, but disastrous. The man 
who offers a bribe to another for any purpose which in- 
volves the infraction of a law of the State or nation is, 
and must be, an equal partner in the guilt ; and any law 
which leaves him out of the transaction is utterly un- 
just on the face of it. If it is wrong to sell liquor, it is 
wrong to buy it, and wrong to sell because, and only be- 
cause, it is wrong to buy. If prostitution is wrong, it is 
wrong on both sides, and he who otters a bribe to a weak 



278 Every-Day Topics. 

woman, without home or friends or the means of life, to 
break the laws of the State, shares her guilt in equal 
measure. Law can never be respected that is not just. 
No law can be enforced that lays its hand upon only- 
one of the parties to a double crime. No such law ever 
was enforced, or ever accomplished the purpose for 
which it was enacted ; and until we are ready to have 
double laws for double crimes, we stultify ourselves by 
our unjust measures to suppress those crimes. Our wit- 
nesses are all accomplices, the moral sense of the com- 
munity is blunted and perverted, and those whom we 
brand as criminals look upon our laws with contempt 
of judgment and conscience. 

The Better Times. 

We were much impressed by a recent remark, attribu- 
ted to Governor Morgan, that under certain circum- 
stances, which were mentioned, but which it is not 
necessary to recall, he did not see why the American 
people could not enjoy a period of prosperity lasting ten 
or twelve years. That which impressed us was the rec- 
ognition, by an experienced business head, of the peri- 
odicity of prosperity in this country. We go headlong 
into business from a period of depression, run a certain 
round, and then down we go again, to rise and fall in- 
definitely in the same way. That has been the history 
of American business as far back as we can remember. 
The question never seems to arise whether this periodicity 
is necessary, or can be avoided ; but every time we work 
up to a crash — to a great and wide-spread financial dis- 
aster — from which we slowly recover, again to repeat 
the old mistakes, and receive the accustomed punish- 
ment. 

Is this lamentable periodicity necessary ? We cannot 



Social Facts, Forces and Reforms. 279 

believe that it is. When we suffer as a community, it 
is because, as a community, we have done wrong. When 
legitimate business is properly done, and not improperly 
overdone ; when credits are not illegitimately extended, 
and speculation is not indulged in ; when public and cor- 
porate trusts are managed without corruption ; when 
true economy is practised in public and private life, a 
great financial calamity, or crash, is simply impossible. 
What Governor Morgan, or any other wise and observ- 
ing man, foresees as one of the consequences of the 
revival of business, is a development of the spirit of 
speculation, a growth of fictitious values, an over-pro- 
duction of manufactures, a multiplication of middle- 
men, a wide extension of credit, a feverish thirst for 
large profits, a stimulation of extravagant habits, an in- 
creasing love of luxury. There is but one natural and 
inevitable end to all these, and that is disaster. It 
comes just as naturally as death follows a competent 
poison. There is no mystery about it whatever ; and 
the strange thing is, that a nation of men are so much 
like a nation of children that it will not learn. 

The better times for which we have waited so long 
that we had almost become hopeless, seem to have 
dawned at last. Business has revived. The spindles 
whirl again ; the merchant has his customers ; once more 
that which is produced finds a ready market ; and once 
more there is labor for the workman, and bread and 
clothing and shelter for the labor. After the terrible 
lesson we have received, it is a good time to talk about 
the future. Are we to go on again in the old way, and 
fill up, within a limited period of years, the old measure 
of foolishness, and tumble again into the old conse- 
quences? 

It is not necessary that we should do so. We have, 
from sheer necessity, -begun to be economical. Let us 



280 Every -Day Topics. 

continue so. Let us build smaller houses ; let us furnish 
them more modestly ; let us live less luxuriously ; let us 
tune all our personal and social life to a lower key. We 
have bravely begun reform in public and corporate af- 
fairs. Let us continue this, and vigilantly see to it that 
our trusts are placed in competent and honest hands. 
We are committed to a reform in the civil service — a 
reform which will extinguish the trade of politics that 
has done so much to debauch and impoverish the coun- 
try. Let us see to it that this reform is thoroughly ef- 
fected. Our cobble-houses have tumbled about our ears ; 
let us not rebuild them. Our speculations lie in ruin, 
with the lives and fortunes they have absorbed. Our 
fictitious values have been extinguished ; let us not try 
to relight the glamour that made them. Our long cred- 
its and our depreciated currency have wrought incalcu- 
lable evils ; let us not continue them. Let us cease to 
deal in paper lies, and pay in gold our honest debts. 
Above all, let us be content with modest gains, cease 
trying to win wealth in a day, and get something out of 
life besides everlasting work and worry. Fully one-half 
of our wants are artificial, and these terrible struggles 
for money are mainly for the supply of wants that we 
have created. 

A great many people, as the better times come on, 
will pull from their hiding-places the worthless securi- 
ties, or insecurities, which they were once tempted to 
buy, and which now are not worth the paper they were 
printed on. They will lament that they had not invested 
their money in what they knew to be safe, rather than in 
that which seemed to be safe, but which promised a 
large return. The worthless railroad bonds and manu- 
facturing stocks that now lumber the coffers of the rich 
and poor alike will serve as mementoes of the popular 
folly, and as grave and impressive lessons for the future. 



Social Facts, Forces and Reforms. 281 

Those who invested for income are without their income, 
and regret, when it is too late, that they were tempted 
by a large promised percentage to forsake the path of 
safety. The Government bond went abroad for a buyer, 
and is good to-day. The railroad bond was bought at 
home, and is good for nothing. 

And now, when money is beginning to be made again, 
is the time for a resolve to be also made that something 
shall always be sacrificed to security — that for safety's 
sake, the large return shall be renounced, and the mod- 
est return accepted. The time for building railroads on 
bonds, for the benefit of rings and directors and con- 
tractors, we trust has passed away. The time for mul- 
tiplying machinery beyond the wants of the country has 
also passed, else our people are quite foolish enough to 
deserve all the disaster that will follow a recurrence to 
the old policy. Let every man try to do a safe, legiti- 
mate business, live within his income, and invest his 
profits in genuine securities, and there is no reason why 
our prosperity may not be permanent. 

Indications of Progress. 

To the eye of experience, there is always something 
pathetic in the hopeful and self-confident energy with 
which a young man of generous impulses and purposes 
strikes out into life. With faith in God, faith in him- 
self, faith in human progress, faith in the influences and 
instrumentalities of reform, he goes to his work deter- 
mined upon leaving the world a great deal better than 
he found it. He throws himself into his enterprises with 
zeal and abandon, and, after twenty or twenty-five years, 
wakes up to a realization of the fact that the world has 
not been very greatly improved by his efforts, and that 
it is not very likely to be improved by them. He has 



282 Every -Day Topics. 

arrested no great tide of iniquity, he has not enlightened 
the hiding-places of ignorance, he has not resuscitated the 
dead, he has not righted the wrong. If not utterly dis- 
couraged, he goes on with his work because he loves it, 
because it seems to be his duty to do so, or, because, after 
all his lack of success, his faith in progress refuses to be 
killed, though " the good time coming " slinks away from 
his vision, among the shadows that brood over the future. 
To help such men as these, and all those who profess 
to believe that the world is growing worse, rather than 
better, it is well, once in a while, to call attention to the 
indications of progress. The first that present them- 
selves to one engaged in literary pursuits are those re- 
lating to the moral tone of literature. How often we are 
called upon in these days to apologize for the indecencies 
of the older writers ! How threadbare has become the 
plea that they represented their time ! We do not doubt 
that Rabelais could once have been tolerated in what was 
regarded as decent society, but no one can read him 
now without a handkerchief at his nose. Sterne was 
very funny and he was very nasty — so nasty that no 
father of to-day would dare to read him to his daughters. 
Fielding, "the father of English fiction," would, if he 
were living to-day, be shunned by his children. What 
sort of a figure would Matthew Prior make in the litera- 
ture produced in 1877 ? W T hy, the indecent poet of to- 
day is obliged to publish his own books ! No respect- 
able publisher will contaminate his shelves, even with 
his name. It matters little how many dramas Tennyson 
may w r rite in these latter days, or how much he may at- 
tempt to give them the ancient form and flavor — they 
will always lack one element — that of indelicacy. He 
leaves coarseness, indecency, the double entente, forever 
behind. They belonged to another age, and all these 
facts show that we have made a great advance. 



Social Facts, Forces and Reforms. 283 

Owing mainly to the wretched assumptions of dog- 
matic theology and the presumptions of priestly power, 
the literary men and women of former days were scoff- 
ers — open, aggressive, defiant enemies of Christianity. 
Now, although there is lamentation on every side that our 
greatest literary producers are wanting in faith — that they 
withhold their affectionate and trustful allegiance to the 
Christian religion, and regard the Church as the conser- 
vator of a great mass of superstitions, the scoffers are 
few. We do not believe there was ever a time when the 
great majority of literary men and women held so kindly 
an attitude toward the Christian faith as they hold to- 
day. They are recognizing the fact that there is some- 
thing in it — a very powerful something in it, some- 
where — and something in it for them, if they could but 
clear it of its husks, and find the divine meat and mean- 
ing of it. They feel their lack of faith to be a misfortune. 
Now, the difference between this attitude and that of 
such a man, say, as Voltaire, or Thomas Paine, marks 
a great advance. We still have Bradlaughs, it is true ; 
but, though we tolerate them, and listen to them, they 
have a very shabby following. 

The changes that have occurred in the Church itself 
are very remarkable evidences of progress. For the last 
three hundred years the world has carried on an organ- 
ized rebellion against priestcraft, and has been slowly 
but surely releasing itself from slavery. The supersti- 
tion of witchcraft has departed from it. It is true that 
we still try men for heresy, and tie their legs with creeds, 
but the followers of Calvin do not burn the descendants 
of Servetus. They " suspend" them " from the minis- 
try " — a mode of hanging which is not only quite harm- 
less, but rather honorable than otherwise. The preju- 
dices between sects have notably been broken down 
within the last fifty years — a result which inevitably fol' 



284 Every -Day Topics. 

lowed the decline of belief in the overshadowing and all- 
subordinating importance of theological formulae. Men 
are trying to get at the centre and essence of Christianity 
as they never were trying before ; and they find that the 
more closely they approach the centre, the more closely 
they get together. 

In the world's politics, we still have war, but how 
modified is even this awful relic of barbarism ! How 
jealous of it has the Christian world become ! How it 
questions it ! How it strives in a thousand ways to miti- 
gate its horrors and inhumanities ! What a shout it sends 
up when two great nations meet and calmly settle by ar- 
bitration a question which in any previous age would 
have been a cause of war ! The duel, too, is in dis- 
grace. Slavery is abolished nearly everywhere on the 
face of the globe. Prisons have been reformed. The 
insane, formerly forsaken of man, and supposed to be 
forsaken of God, are tenderly cared for by every Chris- 
tian state. A thousand charities reach out their helpful 
hands to the unfortunate on every side. The nations are 
brought every day nearer to one another, in the inter- 
changes of commerce, and in the knowledge of, and re- 
spect for, one another. Popular education is augment- 
ing its triumphs and enlarging its area every day. And 
. this record of improvement is sealed by vital statistics 
which show that the average duration of human life has 
been slowly but indisputably increasing from decade to 
decade. 

The world improves, but it improves as the tree grows, 
" without observation." The work of one man's life is 
small when applied to twelve hundred millions of peo- 
ple, but it tells in the grand result. We discover a great 
nest of corruption in our Government, and are tempted 
to despair, but we break it up. There are so many vi- 
cious men around us that we feel as if the world were go- 



Social Facts, Forces and Reforms. 285 

ing to the dogs, yet the recoil and outcry and protest we 
make show that we are more sensitive to the apprehen- 
sion of what is bad than we were formerly. The world 
improves, and the man who cannot see it, and will not 
see it, has a very good reason for suspecting that there 
is something morally at fault in himself. 

An Epidemic of Dishonesty. 

It is the habit of the Protestant Christian world to hold 
what are called " concerts of prayer " for certain objects 
— for colleges, for the spread of Chris tiantity, for Sun- 
day-schools, for missions, etc. Indeed, we write this 
article in what is known as " the week of prayer," every 
day having assigned to it some special object or subject 
of petition. There can be no impropriety in this, and we 
only wish that those who hold the direction of the mat- 
ter were more ready to see the crying needs of the time 
as they rise and assert themselves. Just now we are 
having a great epidemic of dishonesty. In private life it 
seems as if we were watching a game of ten -pins. We 
stand at the head of the alley and see the balls as they 
rumble down toward the straight-backed fellows at the 
other end, and there is a ten-stroke every time. Some 
of the pins stagger about a good deal before they go 
down, or lean against the " dead wood " for awhile, but 
they fall at last, and we find that the man whom we 
don't like is winning the game. 

Men who have held, not only trusts of money, but the 
faith and confidence of the Christian community, one 
after another fall from their high positions, bringing ruin 
not only to themselves, but to all beneath and around 
them. Some of the very men who have hitherto been 
engaged in the concerts of prayer to which we have al- 
luded are to-day in the state prison. Fiduciaries, fairly 



286 Every -Day Topics. 

garlanded with domestic and social affections, standing 
high upon the church records, and bearing names that 
were pass-words into the best society, have, one after 
another, tumbled into infamy. Breaches of trust, prac- 
tices of fraud, downright thieving pursued through a 
series of years — these have become so common that we 
expect to find a new case in every morning's paper. In- 
surance companies are wrecked by their managers ; 
bankers and brokers "re-hypothecate" securities on 
which they have loaned money ; city officials steal funds 
collected from drunkard-makers and run away, and — 
but the story is too familiar and too discouraging and 
disgusting to be rehearsed in all its details. 

Certainly we have seen enough of these shocking cases 
of individual crime to become convinced that the public 
mind is diseased, and that we have an epidemic of dis- 
honesty. Exactly how it has come to us we cannot tell. 
We suspect that the paper lie upon which we have lived 
so many years has had something to do with it ; and now, 
confirming our opinion concerning the nature and preva- 
lence of the disease, we are shamed by the most wide- 
spread and astounding exhibition of the spirit of public 
repudiation. Every honorable American must hang his 
head in shame to see not only whole States legislating 
their debts, or portions of their debts, out of existence, 
but to see in Congress — the Congress of the United States 
— a disposition to tamper with the national honor and the 
public credit. 

At this present writing the much-talked-of silver-bill 
has not been passed — a bill which practically provides 
for the payment of the public debt at the rate of a little 
more than ninety cents on the dollar. Nothing but the 
most stupendous foolishness or the wildest hallucination 
can prevent any man who is engaged in forwarding this 
shocking business from seeing that he is sapping the 



Social Facts, Forces and Reforms. 287 

national credit, tainting the national honor, inflicting in- 
calculable damage upon the business world, and con- 
victing himself of being a thief. It is profoundly humil- 
iating to know that there are men enough in Congress 
who favor this abominable scheme to make it doubtful 
whether it can be blocked by a presidential veto. To 
find powerful newspapers, powerful politicians, men who 
regard themselves as statesmen, whole sections of the 
country, carried away by this madness — nay, rather 
bearing it boastfully, and insisting that it is not only 
sound statesmanship, but the highest political honesty — 
is simply astounding. Words can do no justice to the 
surprise and indignation of the honest patriotism of the 
country in contemplating this horrible lapse from the 
national dignity and honor. 

There is one good result that will come of this busi- 
ness, and as it will come in the form of punishment to 
those who have tampered with the public credit, it will 
not be regretted in any quarter that now lifts its voice in 
protest. There are States that can never borrow any 
more money. Perhaps it will be well for them that they 
cannot, but it is quite possible that they may see the 
time when they will be glad for some purpose to dis- 
count the future a little. Certainly, the West and South 
will find it very much harder to borrow money in the fu- 
ture than they have in the past. This they must expect, 
so far as foreign capital is concerned, for that capital is 
very sensitive ; and if New England or New York cap- 
ital goes West or South for investment, it can only de- 
mand a ruinous rate of interest, for it can never know 
when its claims may be repudiated altogether. These 
States are all paying a higher rate of interest than would 
be necessary if their credit were good. Nothing is bet- 
ter understood than the fact that a good, trustworthy 
security can get money at half the rates that the West 



288 Every- Day Topics. 

and South have been paying for years. All sins of repu- 
diation go home to roost, and if this country should be 
so base as to undertake to pay its debts at ninety cents 
on the dollar, it will be obliged to pay more than it will 
gain by the proceeding the next time it may undertake 
to borrow money in the markets of the world. Retribu- 
tion for all wrongs of this kind is as certain as the sun's 
rising and setting. 

In the meantime, we submit that it would be a good 
plan to have some concert of action among our Chris- 
tian communities in regard to preaching down, or pray- 
ing for the removal of, this awful epidemic of dishonesty. 
It is certainly important and menacing enough to de- 
mand one day in the year before us for its own special 
treatment. Let the heathen rest for a little. Let dog- 
matic theology rest for a little. Let us hold up in this 
matter of trying heretics for a week or so, until at least 
the members of the Church can be trusted with the funds 
of the church, not to speak of the money of widows and 
orphans. We say this in no spirit of banter or mockery. 
We say it because the church has insisted altogether too 
much on matters that do not at all take hold of charac- 
ter and life. The head of Christendom is orthodox 
enough. It is the heart, the character, the life that are 
heteredox, and until these are reached in the way that 
they are not reached now, and have not been reached 
for years, our epidemic will continue and settle down 
into a national disease like the goitre in Switzerland and 
leprosy in Arabia. 

Familiarity. 

Of all the sources of bad manners, we know of none 
so prolific and pernicious as the license of familiarity. 
There is no one among our readers, we presume, who 
has not known a village or a neighborhood in which all 



Social Facts, Forces and Reforms. 289 

the people called one another by their first or Chris- 
tian names. The " Jim," or " Charley," or " Mollie," or 
" Fanny," of the young days of school-life, remain the 
same until they totter into the grave from old age. Now, 
there may be a certain amount of good-fellowship and 
homely friendliness in this kind of familiar address, but 
there is not a particle of politeness in it. It is all very 
well, within a family or a circle of relatives, but when it 
is carried outside, it is intolerable. The courtesies of 
life are carried on at arm's length, and not in a familiar 
embrace. Every gentleman has a right to the title, at 
least, of " Mister," and every lady to that of " Miss " or 
" Mistress," even when the Christian name is used. 
For an ordinary friend to address a married woman as 
" Dolly " or " Mary," is to take with her an unpardon- 
able liberty. It is neither courteous nor honorable ; in 
other words, it is most unmannerly. We have known 
remarkable men, living for years under the blight of 
their familiarly used first names — men whose fortunes 
would have been made, or greatly mended, by removing 
to some place where they could have been addressed 
with the courtesy due to their worth, and been rid for- 
ever of the cheapening processes of familiarity. How can 
a man lift his head under the degradation of being called 
"Sam" by every man, young and old, whom he may 
meet in the street? How can a strong character be car- 
ried when the man who bears it must bow decently to 
the name of "Billy?" 

This is not a matter that we have taken up to sport 
with. We approach it and regard it with all seriousness, 
for this feeling and exhibition of familiarity lie at the 
basis of the worst manners of the American people. We 
are not asking, specially, for reverence for age or high 
position, but for manhood and womanhood. The man 
and woman who have arrived at their majority have a 
13 



290 Every-Day Topics. 

right to a courteous form of address, and he who with- 
holds it from them, or, presuming upon the intimacies 
of boyhood, continues to speak to them as still boy and 
girl, is a boor, and practically a foe to good manners. 
We suppose the Friends would object to this statement, 
but we do not intend to embrace them in this condemna- 
tion. They look at this matter from a different stand- 
point, and base their practice upon certain considera- 
tions which have no recognition in the world around 
them. We think they are mistaken, but their courteous 
way of speaking the whole of the first name is very dif- 
ferent from the familiar use of names and nicknames of 
which we complain. There is no use in denying that 
the free and general use of first names, among men and 
women, in towns and neighborhoods, is to the last de- 
gree vulgar. Gentlemen and ladies do not do it. It is 
not a habit of polite society, anywhere. 

There is a picture we have often contemplated, which 
would impress different men in different ways, of a 
family now living in this city — a picture which is, to us, 
very beautiful and very suggestive. A gentleman of the 
old school, somewhat reduced in circumstances, persists 
in living, so far as his manners are concerned, "like a 
king." Every night he and his sons, before dining, put 
themselves into evening dress. When dinner is an- 
nounced, the old gentleman gives his arm to his vener- 
able wife and leads her to the table. The other mem- 
bers of the family preserve the same manners that they 
would practise if they were dining out, or if friends were 
dining with them. At the close of the meal, the old 
man and his sons rise, while the mother and daughters 
withdraw, and then they sit down over their cups, and 
have a pleasant chat. Now, the average American will 
probably laugh at this picture, as one of foolish and 
painful formality, but there is a very good side to it 



Social Facts, Forces aiid Reforms, 291 

Here is a family which insists on considering itself made 
up of ladies and gentlemen, among whom daily associa- 
tion is no license for familiarity, or the laying aside of 
good and constantly respectful manners toward one 
another. There is 'undoubtedly a great deal of bad 
manners in families, growing out of the license engen- 
dered by familiarity — bad manners between husband 
and wife, and between parents and children. Parents 
are much to blame for permitting familiarity to go so far 
that they do not uniformly receive, in courteous forms, 
the respect due to them from their children as gentlemen 
and ladies. 

Of the degrading familiarity assumed by conscious in- 
feriors, it is hardly necessary to speak. Nothing cures 
such a thing as this but the snub direct, in the most 
pointed and hearty form in which it can be rendered. 

11 The man that hails you ' Tom ' or ' Jack,' 
And proves by thumps upon your back 

How he esteems your merit, 
Is such a friend that one had need 
Be very much his friend, indeed, 
To pardon or to bear it." 

Men do pardon and bear this sort of thing altogether 
too much for their own peace, and the best good of the 
transgressors. The royal art of snubbing is not suffi- 
ciently understood and practised by the average Ameri- 
can gentleman and lady. Considering the credit our 
people have for boldness and push, they yield to the 
familiar touch and speech of the low manners around 
them altogether too tamely. Every gentleman not only 
owes it to himself to preserve his place and secure the 
courtesy that is his by right', but he owes it to society 
that every aggressive, bad-mannered man shall be 
taught his place, and be compelled to keep it. * 



292 Every-Day Topics. 

Social Needs and Social Leading. 

The social potentialities of the average American vil- 
lage are quite beyond any man's calculation. It would 
be difficult to find any village in the country which has 
not the materials and the forces of the best civilization 
and culture. If these forces and these materials were 
not under restraint— if they were only free to follow their 
natural impulses and courses, there would be universal 
progress. The fact, however, is that almost universally 
the agencies concerned in raising the social life of a 
community are, for various reasons, held in check, or 
altogether repressed. 

Let us try to paint a typical village. It shall consist, 
say, of a thousand people, more or less. The village has 
its two or three little churches, and these have their pas- 
tors — men of fair education and faultless morals. Still 
further, the village has one or two physicians and a law- 
yer. In addition to these, there is the postmaster, who 
is usually a man of activity and influence ; there is the 
rich man of the village ; there are the three or four men 
who are only less rich than he ; there are the young, 
well-educated families of these well-to-do people ; there 
are a dozen women who are bright in intellect, and who 
read whatever they can lay their hands on ; there is a 
fair degree of worldly prosperity, and the schools are 
well supported. One would say that nothing is needed 
to make it a model village — full of the liveliest and 
brightest social life, and possessing all the means and 
institutions of intellectual culture and progress. To re- 
peat a phrase with which we began, the social potentiali- 
ties of the village are incalculable. All the agencies, 
and materials and appurtenances for a beautiful social 
life and growth seem to exist, yet the fact probably is 
that the village is socially dead. 






Social Facts, Forces and Reforms. 293 

If we look into the condition of things, we shall find 
that the little churches are, through their very littleness 
and weakness, jealous of each other ; that their pastors 
are poor and are kept upon a starving intellectual diet ; 
that the doctors and the lawyer are absorbed in their 
professions ; that the rich men are bent upon their 
money-getting and money-saving, and that all the young 
people are bent upon frivolous amusements. The vil- 
lage has no public library, no public hall, no public 
reading-room, no lyceum, no reading-clubs, no literary 
clubs, and no institutions or instituted means for foster- 
ing and developing the intellectual and social life of the 
villagers. 

We have seen exactly this condition of things in a vil- 
lage many times, and we have seen, under all these 
possibilities and the hard facts of apparent indifference 
or social inertia associated with them, a universal desire 
for something better. We have seen churches ashamed 
of their jealousies and the meagre support accorded to 
their ministers. We have seen young people dissatis- 
fied with their life, and wishing that it could be changed, 
and we have seen our dozen of bright, reading women 
ready and longing to make any sacrifice for the produc- 
tion of a better social atmosphere. Nay, Ave believe that 
the average American village is ready for improvement 
— ready to be led. 

The best social leading is the one thing lacking. Some- 
times it does not need even this — only some fitting oc- 
casion that shall bring people together, and reveal the 
under harmonies which move and the sympathies which 
bind them. The probabilities are that there is not a vil- 
lage in America that needs anything more than good 
leading to raise its whole social and intellectual life in- 
calculably. The village that is most dead and hopeless 
needs but one harmonizing, unselfish, elevated will to 



294 Every-Day Topics. 

lead and mould it to the best life and the best issues. 
We cannot illustrate this power of leading better than by- 
citing the results of the recent mode of raising church 
debts. One of the two or three men who have become 
famous for raising church debts goes into a pulpit in the 
morning and stands before a bankrupt congregation. 
He is told before he enters the building that every effort 
has been made to raise the debt, but in vain ; that, in- 
deed, the people have not the money, and could not 
raise the required sum if they would. Yet, in two hours 
every dollar is subscribed, and the whole church sits 
weeping in mute and grateful surprise. No advantage 
whatever has been taken of them. They have simply, 
under competent leading, done what they have all along 
wanted to do, and what they have known it was their 
duty to do. 

Any man who has ever had anything to do in organiz- 
ing the social life of a village has, we venture to say, been 
surprised, amid what seemed to be universal stagnation, 
to find how general was the desire for reform. Every- 
body has been ready. All were waiting for just the right 
man to set them going, and he only needed to say the 
word, or lift and point the finger. 

It is not necessary to break up any legitimate family 
feeling that may exist in churches, or to interfere with 
social cliques and " sets," or to break down any walls 
between classes. We talk now only of the general so- 
cial and intellectual life which brings people together in 
common high pursuits, and gives a village its character 
and influence. It is only from this life that a strong and 
efficient public spirit can come. A village must hold a 
vigorous general life outside of sects and cliques and 
parties, before it can make great progress, and it is as- 
tonishing how quickly this life may be won by the right 
leading. 



Social Facts, Forces and Reforms. 295 

We write this article simply to call the attention of 
that resident, or those residents of any village, who will 
naturally read it, to their own duty in this matter. The 
chances are that they live in a village whose life is split 
into petty fragments, and devoted to selfish, or frivolous, 
or brutal pursuits. We assure them that all the people , 
need is good leading, and that there must be one among 
them who has the power in some good degree of leading, 
organizing, and inspiring a united and better life. It is 
not an office in which personal ambition has any legiti- 
mate place — that of social leadership. Any man who 
enters upon it with that motive mistakes his position, and 
hopelessly degrades his undertaking. But wherever there 
is a sluggish social life, or none at all that is devoted to 
culture and pure and elevating pursuits, somebody — and 
it is probably the one who is reading this article — is neg- 
lecting a duty, from which he is withheld, most probably, 
by modesty. We assure him that if he is really fit for 
his work, he will find an astonishing amount of promis- 
ing material ready and waiting for his hands. 

Marriage as a Test. 

If Nature teaches us anything, it is that the life-long 
marriage of one woman to one man is her own ordina- 
tion. The sexes, in the first place, are produced in so 
nearly equal numbers that provision is made for just 
this. Then the passion of love makes the one woman 
and the one man supremely desirable to each other, so 
that to the man or the woman moved by it, all men and 
women, other than the object beloved, are comparatively 
of no value or attractiveness whatever. It is the supreme 
desire of a man in love to possess and forever to hold 
the object of his love. On this passion of love of one 
man for one woman, and one woman for one man, is 



296 Every-Day Topics. 

based the institution of the family, which we regard, in 
common with the mass of society, as the true social unit 
It seems to us that nothing can be more demonstrable 
than that the family which grows out of what we call 
Christian marriage is, in all ways, better adapted to 
secure safety, comfort, happiness, and morality to the 
community, than any substitute that was ever tried or 
was ever imagined. The consummation of love is the 
production of offspring. The family is the institution 
which protects and rears within an atmosphere of nat- 
ural affection the children born of love. The care and 
support of children are thus in the family brought upon 
the hands of those who are responsible for their intro- 
duction into life. 

We call this Christian marriage, and the family a 
Christian institution ; but, in establishing these institu- 
tions as such, Christianity has done nothing more than 
to re-enact laws of nature written with great plainness. 
The growth of the family is as natural as the growth of 
a plant. Mutual love, whose supreme motive is mutual 
possession, ultimates in the production of offspring, 
whom it is a joy to rear under a separate roof, subject to 
the economies of a home. It is in a home constituted 
in this way that the human virtues are best cultivated, 
that the finer affections are most naturally developed, 
and that those attachments are formed and those senti- 
ments engendered which make life a beautiful and sig- 
nificant thing. The associations of the family and home, 
in which a man is reared, are the most inspiring that he 
knows ; and a man whose childhood knew no home, 
knows and feels that he has lost or missed one of the 
great satisfactions and one of the most sweetening and 
uplifting influences of his life. The history of millions 
of human lives stands ready to attest the salutary influ- 
ence of home, and the unmeasurable loss that comes to 



Social Facts, Forces a?id Reforms. 297 

all men who are deprived of it. It is a case past argu- 
ing. We need only to appeal to the universal conscious- 
ness. Nothing is better understood, or more widely ad- 
mitted, than that home, based on the life-long marriage 
of one woman to one man, and the family that naturally 
grows out of such a union, is the great conservative in- 
fluence of the world's best society. Its government, its 
nurture, its social happiness, its delightful influences 
and associations, make it the brightest, loveliest, holiest, 
divinest thing that grows from any impulse or affection 
of human nature under the sanctions of Christianity. 

A few days ago we received a letter from a correspon- 
dent, asking us to do for the Oneida Community what 
we had permitted a contributor to do for the followers 
of George Rapp — to write, or procure to be written, a 
complete exposition of its principles and practices. We 
respectfully decline to do any such thing. The amount 
of dirt involved in an exposure of the Oneida Commu- 
nity's views of marriage and the practices that go with 
them would forbid the enterprise. This community 
stands condemned before the world, tried simply by the 
marriage-test. It revolutionizes the family out of exis- 
tence. It destroys home, and substitutes for what we 
know as Christian marriage something which it calls 
" complex marriage." We know by the phrase some- 
thing of what it must be, but its abominations are too 
great to be spread before the general reader. Into such 
a sea of irredeemable nastiness no editor has a right to 
lead his readers. 

How remarkable it is that whenever an enthusiast in 
religion gets new light, and adopts what he considers 
" advanced views," he almost invariably begins to tam- 
per with marriage ! In this tampering he always betrays 
the charlatan, and sufficiently warns all who are tempted 
to follow him to beware of him. There is no better test 
13* 



298 Every-Day Topics. 

of a new system or scheme of life than its relation to 
Christian marriage. If it tampers with that it is always 
bad, and can by no possibility be good. The Shakers 
form a community built on this rotten foundation. They 
destroy the family, root and branch. They have no 
place for love, and enter into a determined and organ- 
ized fight with the God of Nature, who, by the strongest 
passions and impulses He has ever implanted in the 
human soul, has commanded them to establish families 
and homes. Shakerism is good for nothing if it is not 
good universally — if it ought not to be adopted univer- 
sally. But universal adoption would be the suicide of a 
race, and a race has no more right to commit suicide 
than a man. Besides, the damming of one of the most 
powerful streams in human nature only sets the water 
back to cover the banks it was intended to nourish and 
to drain. It is too late to talk about the superior sanctity 
of the celibate. We have no faith in. it whatever. The 
vow of chastity simply emphasizes in the mind the pas- 
sion it is intended, for spiritual reasons, to suppress, and 
fixes the attention upon it. The Shaker, in denying love 
to himself and all the hallowed influences that grow out 
of family and home, gains nothing in holiness, if he do 
not lose irretrievably. He is the victim of a shocking 
mistake, and he disgraces himself and his own father 
and mother by his gross views of an institution before 
whose purity and beneficence he and his whole system 
stand condemned. 

Of course we do not need to allude to the Mormon. 
His views of marriage — revealed, of course — are simply 
beastly. But these new schemes of life, religion and 
philosophy are constantly springing up. It is very dif- 
ficult for any system of socialism to establish itself with- 
out tampering with marriage, and one of the best argu- 
ments against all sorts of communities and phalansteries 



Social Facts, Forces and Reforms. 299 

and what-nots of that sort, is that the family, as a unit, 
is unmanageable within them. They can take in and 
organize a miscellaneous mass of individuals, and pro- 
vide some sort of a dirty substitute for marriage, but the 
family bothers them. It is a government within a gov- 
ernment, that they cannot get along with. So the mar- 
riage-test is a good one in all cases of the kind. 

Popular Despotism. 

There is a popular theory that a despotism always 
consists of the arbitary and oppressive rule of the many 
by one, or a few, and it seems hard for the people to 
realize that the only despotisms or tryannies that we have 
in this country are popular. 

We have had recent occasion to observe an instance 
of this. A gentleman employed, through the head of a 
Broadway establishment, a paper-hanger for three or 
four weeks. Now, a paper-hanger does not need to be 
a man of genius. His papers are selected for him, and 
he has simply to put them on so that they will remain. 
There can be, of course, such a thing as a poor paper- 
hanger, but nobody would ever dream of placing the 
calling very high in the realm of what is denominated 
" skilled labor." When the gentleman was called upon 
to pay the bill, he found that his paper-hanger had been 
making ten dollars a day. Inquiring into the matter, 
he ascertained that the man was a " society man." Pro- 
testing against the injustice of paying to a paper-hanger 
three or four times as much per diem as he was paying 
his carpenters and painters, the answer was, that it 
could not be helped, that the men were bound to- 
gether and pledged to each other, and nobody could be 
had to do the work more cheaply. The gentleman, of 
course, submitted to the robbery, for such it essentially 



3 00 Every - Day Top ics. 

was. There was not the value of ten dollars a day in 
the work, and every penny taken over and above the 
value was an extortion, an abuse of power, an essen- 
tial outrage and theft. 

Now, if capital were to combine to fix the unjust price 
of a barrel of flour, or, if any one man could monopo- 
lize a market and arbitrarily raise the price of the neces- 
saries of life, and should do this relentlessly, without the 
slightest reference to intrinic values, our paper-hanger 
and his brother paper-hangers would very readily under- 
stand the nature of the case. It is precisely like their own. 
One has labor to sell, the other has flour and sugar ; and 
both are guilty of immoral and despotic conduct. Practi- 
cally, however, there are no combinations of capital for 
oppressing consumers. Coal companies and railroad cor- 
porations, in their competitions with each other, make 
arrangements which they never loyally adhere to and are 
always breaking ; and speculators, in their struggles with 
each other, get up " corners " in wheat and other neces- 
saries of life ; but they are always short-lived, and all 
honorable business men denounce them. The principle 
that lies at the basis of all organized attempts to raise 
the price either of labor or merchandise above that 
which, in a perfectly free competition, is fixed by the 
laws of demand and supply, is a principle of despotism, 
and essential robbery and wrong. This is a despotism 
or a tyranny practised by the many upon the few — a 
popular despotism. 

Of course, all tyrannies are wrong in their nature, and 
all tyrannies, being founded in wrong, must be supported 
by wrong. Tyranny must have its laws and regula- 
tions. If a high price for a certain kind of work is to 
be maintained by a society, then that society must keep 
itself small. The number of apprentices must be lim- 
ited. The competition must not be free. The wants 



Social Facts, Forces and Reforms. 301 

and interests of the public and the rights of the public 
are never to be considered. All that is to be consid- 
ered is the interest, or what seems to be the interest, of 
the organization. The number of workmen must be 
kept small, so that the supply can meet the demand 
with the power to dictate its own arbitary price. In all 
this action and attitude of the trade-union the public is 
the sufferer ; but there comes a time when the society 
becomes despotic upon its own members, and even upon 
those of the same craft who do not choose to be society 
men. We have just passed through a period of business 
depression. There has been no profit in doing business, 
and men have been glad to get work at any price. But 
they have not been permitted to work at any price. The 
laws of the society have forbidden them. They have been 
driven from their work, forced into strikes that were 
more foolish and arbitrary and brutal than we can de- 
scribe, and made to contribute for the support of men 
who were quite willing to work and earn their living at 
the market price. Begun in wrong — based in wrong — 
what wonder that the end has often been riot, and vio- 
lence, and bloodshed ! The simple truth is that it is 
all wrong from beginning to end. No body of men, no 
guild, no handicraft, has the moral or social right to 
erect itself into a despotism, and, by a set of rules, shut 
itself off from the operation of those laws which govern 
all trade under the rights of a perfectly free competition. 
Of the effects of that despotism which reduces all ex- 
cellence to the level of all ignorance and unskilfulness, 
we do not need to speak. To fix the wages of all men 
within a society at one figure, is to offer a premium for 
imbecility, and to strike a crushing blow upon the self- 
respect and the amour pro fire of those who have thought 
it worth while to become better workmen than their 
fellows. 



302 Every -Day Topics. 

It is a hard word to say, but the trade-union is a 
nursery of that monster whose shadow sometimes dark- 
ens the earth with menace, and which men call " The 
Commune." Now, nothing so foul, nothing so disgust- 
ing, nothing so base, nothing so iniquitous and outra- 
geous, was ever conceived in the womb of time — begot- 
ten of the devil — as " The Commune." It can never 
live in this country for a day. It can never live in any 
country that has three million land-holders. Its brief 
reign in France was confined to Paris. It made no more 
progress among its five million land-owners than fire 
would make upon the waves of the ocean. Commu- 
nism in France is dead, and all that we mean to say 
about it in this connection is, that the trade societies 
are the natural nurseries of the Commune, and we say 
this to show the rottenness of their basis. At Pitts- 
burg the strikers took possession and engaged in the 
destruction of property not their own, and the materials 
of the Commune mingled with them as naturally as one 
stream of water mingles with another. The whole sys- 
tem that leads to violence like this is necessarily a sys- 
tem of demoralization. This undertaking to control 
the labor of a class against the competitions and inter- 
ests of a whole country, to regulate that labor and its 
prices in all their details, to reduce and to raise to one 
standard of reward all the varied degrees of skill and 
excellence, and to order everything for the benefit of 
the society as against all other society, even to the exer- 
cise of hardship upon the members and violence upon 
all opposing or non-consenting forces, is a most efficient 
training for the Commune. It tends toward it — it pre- 
pares and educates, or sophisticates the mind for it ; 
and if our late hard times have in any degree — and we 
believe that they have in a great degree — weakened the 
hold of these societies upon the different trades, let us 



Social Facts, Forces and Reforms. 303 

thank God for at least one great and good result of their 
coming, and take courage. 

The Social Evil. 

There are some topics which an editor does not like to 
write upon — which the people do not like to read about; 
but when they relate to a great social danger they are 
forced on the public attention, and must be discussed 
with such inoffensiveness of language as may be possi- 
ble in a frank and forcible treatment of them. The late 
Grand Jury, which found it in the line of its apprehended 
duty to recommend the establishment of regulated pros- 
titution, has forced the topic upon the press, and it 
must be met and disposed of. 

It is noteworthy that at a time when a most determined 
effort is making, not only in England, but all over the 
Continent, for the doing away of the laws which in Eng- 
land exist under the name of the " Contagious Diseases 
Act," and, : in other countries, under equally insignificant 
and innocent titles, there should be widely scattered, but 
determined efforts to give those laws an asylum in 
America. There have been as many as three or four 
attempts to establish regulative laws in Washington, 
three in New York, one in Cincinnati, one in St. Louis — 
successful, but now repealed — one in Pennsylvania, and 
one in California. These attempts have been initiated 
and made in various ways. Boards of Health have had 
something to do with the matter. Committees on Crime 
and Prison Reports have recommended such laws ; and 
the advocates of the change have sought to accomplish 
their purposes through legislative enactments and city 
charters. The presentation of the Grand Jury in this 
city is the latest attempt in this direction ; and now, on 
behalf of common decency and public morality, and on 



304 Every-Day Topics. 

behalf of all right-thinking men, and absolutely all wo- 
men, we beg leave to enter our most emphatic protest. 

We do not question the motives of the Grand Jury. 
There is a class of good men who, apprehending the im- 
mensity of the social evil, and absolutely hopeless of its 
cure, have come to the conclusion that the best way is 
to regulate that which they cannot suppress — to recog- 
nize in law, and regulate by law, a bestial crime which 
no penalties have been sufficient to exterminate. These 
men mean well. They embrace in their number many 
physicians and scientific men. They support their posi- 
tion by a thousand ingenious arguments ; but the great 
crowd that stand behind these men — silent, watchful, and 
hopeful — ready with votes, ready with money — is made 
up of very different materials, and actuated by very dif- 
ferent motives. They are men who desire to commit 
crime with impunity — to visit a brothel without danger 
of apprehension and without danger of infection. They 
are the cold-blooded, scoffing foes of social purity. 
There is not one of them who does not desire to have 
prostitution "regulated" on behalf of his own beastly 
carcass. 

The effect of these regulative laws on all European so- 
ciety has been precisely that which, in the nature of the 
case, might have been anticipated. During the existence 
of Christian society, all commerce of the sexes outside 
of the obligations and liberties of Christian marriage, has 
been regarded and treated as a crime. " Thou shalt 
not commit adultery " has been transcribed from the 
tables of stone upon every statute-book of every Christian 
State. Now, the very first effect of an instituted at- 
tempt, on the part of the State, to regulate by law a well- 
defined crime, not only against the civil but the moral 
law, is to lower the standard of the public morality. To 
legalize vice, even to the extent of regulating it as an 



Social Facts, Forces and Reforms. 305 

evil, is to make it in a degree respectable. To regulate 
a vicious calling — carried on only to the everlasting ruin 
of all who are engaged in it — is to recognize it as a call- 
ing, and legitimize it. We say that the evil effects of this 
legislation on European society might have been antici- 
pated by any but the blind. It was in the nature of the 
case that the tone of the public morality would be low- 
ered by it. When, added to this terrible result, the 
people found themselves released from the fear of infec- 
tion, through the medical supervision of the wretched 
women whose legitimized calling provided for their bes- 
tialities, they were ready to accept their new privileges. 
The morality of Paris, of Brussels, of Berlin, of Vienna — 
of all the great Continental centres — has been absolutely 
honeycombed with sexual corruption. Morality low- 
ered, increased immunity from danger effected, and the 
beast in man was let loose to have its own way. The 
translation of a vice into an evil is the transformation of 
a thing to be blamed into a thing to be pitied and de- 
plored. Recognizing that evil as a necessity, we have 
only to take one more step to make it an ordination of 
heaven. 

" Well, what would you do ? " inquire the advocates of 
regulation. u Here is a great evil. We suppress it in 
one quarter, and it springs to life in another. It has as 
many heads as Hydra. The diseases which it engenders 
are poisoning the children who are innocent. They are 
reducing the physical tone of the nation, and thus di- 
minishing the average years of life." Yes, we know all 
this ; but how do you expect to treat effectually a two- 
sided crime with one-sided laws ? Who spreads disease 
among the children, or transmits it to them ? The wo- 
men ? Not at all. It is the class for whicn you have 
no law — the class which, nine cases in ten, brought the 
women down to dissolute habits — the class which, with 



306 \ Every-Day Topics. 

bribes in its hands, makes prostitution as a calling pos- 
sible. The men go free. You propose to let them go 
free. For them you have no registration, no medical 
inspection, no surveillance, no restraints, and no penal- 
ties of any sort. The bald injustice of the thing is a 
temptation to profanity. There is not a woman in the 
land, bad or good, who does not feel it to be such. To 
undertake by law to regulate what we call the social evil, 
is to undertake to provide facility and safety for the 
overbearing passions of the young, and the incorrigible 
lecher grown old in his vice. It is practically to dis- 
courage marriage by debasing the moralities and the 
respect for woman in which only true marriage is possi- 
ble. It is to transform American society, socially the 
most pure of any on the earth, into the semblance and 
substance of that which prevails in Paris, Vienna, and 
Berlin. It is indefinitely and immeasurably to increase 
the moral side of the evil, which you and all good people 
deplore, by legitimizing it, and by diminishing its physi- 
cal dangers. The laws you propose would be brush 
heaped upon a bonfire. 

If we are to have laws, let us have just laws. In the 
first place, let us not talk about a voluntary crime as a 
necessary and incurable evil. That is demoralization at 
the start. In the second place, let us have for all two- 
sided crimes two-sided laws. Prostitution is a two-sided 
crime. It is not possible without a confederate or a com- 
panion. Make the same law for one that you make for 
the other, and see how long prostitution would last. Do 
this, and prostitution would be reduced seventy-five per 
cent, in twenty-four hours. Station a policeman at every 
brothel. Compel every man who enters to register his 
name and residence, and report himself to the medical 
authorities every three days for a month. Provide the 
same penalties, the same restrictions, the same disgraces 



Social Facts, Forces a?id Reforms, 307 

and painful humiliations for one party that you do for 
the other, and then see what would come of it. There 
is something curative in this proposition, because it is 
indubitably just ; and the reason why prostitution has 
grown to its alarming dimensions is simply and only be- 
cause the laws relating to it are unjust. No legislation 
which takes into consideration only one of the guilty 
parties can possibly thrive. It never ought to thrive. 
It is an outrage upon the criminal who is discriminated 
against. It is an outrage upon the common sense of 
justice. 

When our grand juries, and our boards of health, 
and our medical conventions, and our legislators are 
ready for regulative laws which embrace both parties 
in the social crime, we shall be with them — for such 
laws will not be simply regulative — they will be curative. 
Until then, we call upon all good people to oppose as 
they would oppose fire, or plague, or invasion, every at- 
tempt to give us the regulative laws that have debased 
all Europe, and from which many of the best Europeans 
are trying to release themselves. 

The Popular Wisdom. 

A discussion has recently been brought to a close in 
The Nineteenth Century, under the title, "A Modern 
Symposium/' on the question: " Is the popular judg- 
ment in politics more just than that of the higher 
orders ? " The leading participants in this discussion 
were Messrs. Gladstone, Grey, Hutton, Lowe, and Lord 
Arthur Russell. The most that seems to be proved is 
that much may be said on both sides, though the pre- 
ponderance of opinion seems to be on the affirmative 
side of the question. Much is made in the discussion of 
the parliamentary history of the last seventy years, in its 



308 Every-Day Topics. 

exhibition of the popular judgment upon political mat- 
ters. After all, Mr. Lowe puts the matter in a nutshell 
when he says : " Take two persons, one from the lower 
and one from the higher classes, and propose to them 
any political question ; which will be likely to give you 
a right answer, the man who has had some kind of edu- 
cation, or the man who has not passed beyond a very 
moderate acquaintance with reading and writing, prob- 
ably somewhat the worse for wear ? * The massing or 
multiplication of ignorance can hardly amount to wis- 
dom. The best men will do the best thinking and the 
best work. 

We have in this country, as they have in England, the 
curse of trades-unions, and it seems to us that the man- 
agement of these in America has pretty conclusively 
proved that what would be called in England the "lower 
orders" have the very poorest judgment. Certainly, no 
educated, intelligent man, or body of men, would pur- 
sue the course of these men in the management of their 
interests. Nothing more utterly suicidal can be imag- 
ined than the policy which inaugurates and perpetuates 
strikes, and organizes for labor a struggle with capital as 
its enemy. In the long depression of industrial interests 
from which this country has suffered, we have seen cap- 
ital keeping labor employed, sometimes at a loss, never 
at a profit, and always for the benefit of labor, while 
labor has quarrelled with its bread and butter. Even 
under these extreme circumstances, laborers have struck 
for higher wages, and compelled the closing of mills and 
the shutting down of gates ; and when business has re- 
vived, and capital has at last won its chance for a mod- 
est remuneration, the most unreasonable demands from 
labor have made its enterprise a torment. Nothing more 
unfair than the demands of labor, and nothing more un- 
wise than its action, can be imagined. Everybody but 



Social Facts, Forces and Reforms. 309 

the laborers themselves have seen that they have done 
themselves harm and not good, and that the result of 
their policy has been bad upon every interest involved. 
Certainly we are not to regard the outcome of trades- 
unions in this country as an evidence of the superiority 
of the judgment of the common people in politics. Men 
who manage their own affairs so badly can hardly be re- 
garded as fit men to guide the state. Men who are in- 
capable of seeing that other interests besides their own 
must thrive, or the latter can have no basis of thrift, 
could not be trusted with legislation. 

We doubt whether there was ever a time in the history 
of the country when Congress was more a representative 
of the popular will than at present, and we have good 
reason to believe that the nation has never seen the time 
when every good interest was in such dread of Congress 
as it is at present. If Congress could not meet again 
for the next five years, there is hardly an interest or a 
class in the community that would not feel profoundly 
relieved. The members of both houses have, in so 
many instances, come from their constituencies so pos- 
sessed by and charged with crude theories of govern- 
ment and finance, based in popular ignorance and 
caprice, that the country at large has no faith in them. 
The popular estimate of the silver question and the soft 
money question, in many localities that make themselves 
felt in Congress, is absolutely dangerous to every politi- 
cal, commercial and industrial interest. There are mul- 
titudes to-day who honestly believe that the resumption 
of specie payments is a great public calamity — that an 
honest dollar is a curse to a poor man — that the poor 
man is harmed by the fact that a dollar in paper is as 
good as a dollar in gold. Still the heresy lingers in the 
popular mind in many localities that money can, by 
some process, be made cheap, so that by some hocus- 



310 Every-Day Topics. 

pocus the poor man can get hold of it without paying 
its equivalent for it. They do not reason upon the 
subject at all. They seem incapable of understanding 
that no value can be acquired without paying for it, and 
that a good dollar will buy just as much more of the 
commodities of life as it is dearer than a " cheap dollar." 
They have but to look back a few years to the time of 
cheap money ; their labor, it is true, commanded 
nominally a large price, but their rent was twice what it 
is now, and food and clothing were proportionately 
dearer than they are now ; but this seems to teach them 
nothing. They seem incapable of comprehending the 
fact that by an unchangeable law money will command 
only what it is worth, and will certainly command from 
them what it is worth. They have an idea that there 
should be more money when it is the testimony of all 
who know that the volume of money is quite large 
enough for all purposes, only it cannot be had without 
rendering an equivalent for it. It l\as to be worked for 
and earned, but when it is acquired it is good money, 
without any discount, competent to enter the markets of 
the world on even terms. 

The popular estimate and treatment of the silver ques- 
tion are as wild as the popular estimate and treatment of 
the soft money question. The effect that silver was to 
have upon the laboring man's interests was to be little 
less than miraculous. It was to increase his debt-paying 
power. No wise financier could see how this was to be 
done. Nobody wanted the silver to handle, and nobody 
wants it now, when he can get gold or paper, but there 
were sections of the people represented in Congress 
who believed there was in silver a panacea for their 
financial ills ; but they have learned that a silver dollar 
costs as much as any other dollar, and that its coinage 
does nothing toward putting it into their pockets. So 



Social Facts, Forces and Reforms. 311 

the dollars which everybody dislikes accumulate in the 
treasury, and go on accumulating, for the business 
world has no use for them. 

Nearly all these financial schemes have had their 
birth in ignorant brains, have been adopted by igno- 
rant people, and pushed in Congress by demagogues 
fresh from the people, and sworn to the service of those 
who sent them. These men, representing these people, 
are the bane and terror of the country, in all its great 
interests and enterprises. So true is this that the one 
danger that stands as a menace of all national prosper- 
ity and safety is Congress. We dread Congress as we 
do pestilence. It is a stench and an abomination. It 
was well that the writers of " A Modern Symposium" 
did not appeal to the present conduct of American af- 
fairs for evidence of the superiority of the political wis- 
dom of the common people. They certainly would 
have appealed in vain. Everything in our history shows 
us that brains, well cultivated, are needed for govern- 
ment. In great crises, when the moral element is in- 
volved, when right and wrong are to be decided upon, 
and the patriotic sentiment and impulse are to be 
appealed to, the people can be trusted ; but of the 
science of government, of true political wisdom, and of 
the knowledge of political economy, they are as innocent 
as children, and cannot be trusted to take care of them- 
selves. 

A Word on Politics. 

As both political parties have at various times declared 
themselves in favor of a reform in the Civil Service, we 
shall not be accused of dabbling in party politics by an 
allusion to the subject. It is true that neither party has 
shown itself to be in thorough earnest. The men on 
both sides who run the political machine are very much 



312 Every-Day Topics. 

averse to this reform. They talk in their organs ver> 
contemptuously about "doctrinaires," and "impracti- 
cable schemes," and about the application to democratic 
institutions of a rule of action transplanted from the mo- 
narchical and aristocratic government of Great Britain ! 

Those who have read the President's Annual Message, 
and have carefully considered his somewhat elaborate 
treatment of this subject, will hardly find anything new 
or impressive in what we may offer here ; but Presidents' 
messages are read so little, or so carelessly, that the 
bread may well be broken to the multitude by other 
hands. The subject is an easy one to argue. There is 
no man living who, before an audience of intelligent and 
non-partisan persons, can justify the old mode of politi- 
cal appointment to office. Every consideration is against 
it. The rewarding of party service by the gift of office 
is, in the first place, a direct corruption of morals in all 
concerned. It is the patent substitution of a base mo- 
tive in political work for a patriotic one ; and wherever 
and in whatever measure it prevails, it degrades pol- 
itics and debases character, so that the very process 
of earning office by party work unfits for the public ser- 
vice with which it seeks to be rewarded. In any fair 
man's mind,. the fact that a man has done some powerful 
politician's dirty work for the sake of getting an office 
which has been promised him, would be enough to con- 
demn him as most unfit to hold any office in the gift of 
the Government. 

Opposition to Civil Service reform comes only from 
party politicians who have dirty work to do — and by 
dirty work we mean simply the work which they are 
ashamed to do for themselves. How to pay for this 
work without taking the money out of their own pockets is 
the question. If there were some other way besides the 
bestowal of public office, they would take the people's 



Social Facts, Forces and Reforms. 313 

side of this matter, and we should have the reform fully 
and at once. But, in truth, they see no way of getting 
their own work done except by paying office for it. So 
they are opposed to the reform, and throw all possible 
obstacles in its way. In this they are aided, of course, 
by all their whipper-snappers up and down the land. 
Let it be understood that the advocates of reform simply 
ask that the Government shall have the advantage of the 
same rules of business that are practised and enjoyed 
by a private man or corporation. No business concern 
would prosper, or be considered safe for a day, whose 
affairs were carried on by a set of officials and opera- 
tives wh3 had received their places, not because of any 
fitness for their work, but from corrupt considerations 
of favoritism. The fact that reform is entirely practi- 
cable is demonstrated by the history of the same reform 
in Great Britain, where office was formerly bestowed 
both as a reward of party service and as the gift of per- 
sonal favoritism. The reform met the same opposition 
there that it is meeting here ; but it is complete, and all 
are not only satisfied, but delighted with it. 

It should be remembered, also, in the consideration of 
this subject, that the effect of " the machine " is not only 
disastrous to the efficiency of the public business, but 
that it reacts mischievously upon the political life of the 
country. If there were no such thing as-" the spoils of 
office," a very different set of men would naturally find 
themselves, in possession of the political machinery. It 
is the base men — the men who are open to mercenary 
considerations, the men who are after rewards of various 
sorts, and who are working in the private interest of 
others as well as themselves — who control the primaries, 
and drive from influence those who cannot become yoke- 
fellows with political understrappers and gamblers. The 
great masses of the people are honest, and desire to deal 
14 



314 Every -Day Topics. 

honestly with political affairs ; but they have not at all 
the machinery of politics in their hands, and they are led 
by a set of political tricksters into campaigns the bottom 
motives of which are utterly base and shameful. Take the 
last political campaign in New York. The Democratic 
party was divided on the question simply as to who 
should control it. It was a fight as to what set of personal 
influences should have the precedence. The Republican 
party ran a ticket nominated by the machine — a ticket 
notoriously unpopular, every influence of which would 
be delivered against Civil Service reform — set up and 
approved by the arch opponent of that reform. That an 
administration fully committed to this reform should be 
compelled, for the sake of consolidating its party and 
keeping it in harmony for its next year's work, to labor 
for the success of this ticket, was the most disgusting and 
humiliating dish of political crow that any administration 
was ever called upon to eat. Voting, in these last years, 
has become simply a choice of evils. Men have party 
preferences, and desire to see their party succeed. They 
find themselves hampered, however, by the machine, 
with never a good ticket ; and in their votes they nomi- 
nally approve of men and methods which are offensive or 
unsatisfactory to them. So true is this, that Mr. Evarts 
will be obliged to look among the " scratchers," whom 
he taunted with " voting in the air," for the indorsement 
of that part of the message of his chief which is devoted 
to the matter of Civil Service reform. 

Congress can do no better work than in keeping alive, 
by a generous and just appropriation, the Civil Service 
Commission, established several years ago. It seems 
that, notwithstanding the practical suspension of the 
presiding Commission, examinations have been kept up 
at various points, and especially in New York, with the 
very happiest results. We say Congress can do no bet* 






Social Facts, Forces and Reforms. 315 

ter work than this, for it is in the line of political purity 
and departmental efficiency. The obstructionists can 
have no hope that this reform is going backward. They 
may find a Grant who will grow lukewarm in their favor, 
or a Conkling to cook crow for his own party, but these 
will prove to be only temporary advantages. The reform 
is based upon right. It is on the side of a sound busi- 
ness policy in public administration. It has the good 
will of good and unselfish men. It is only opposed by 
base men — by selfish men, who have something to make 
out of the bestowal of office as a political or personal 
favor. The people believe in it, and the people will 
have it — if not by this Congress and this administration, 
then by others, some time and soon. 

A Hopeful Lesson. 

Our Northern people have a great deal of impatience 
with the manner in which the Southerner treats the 
negro, and all those who teach or specially befriend him. 
They cannot appreciate, or admit, the fact that the 
Southerner can be conscientious in this treatment, and 
that he may honestly and earnestly believe that he is 
doing God and his country good service in keeping the 
negro from his vote, and even bulldozing or shooting 
him to secure that end. We know that Southern men 
who stand well in the Church have said, with all hearti- 
ness and without any apparent question of conscience, 
that it is better that a negro should be killed than that 
he should be permitted to vote. That multitudes of 
them have been killed in order to keep them, and scare 
others, from the polls, seems to be a notorious fact, that 
is testified to by innumerable living witnesses. To at- 
tribute this awful outrage exclusively to inhumanity, 
brutality, and blood-thirstiness is to fail utterly to ap* 



3 1 6 Every -Day Topics. 

predate the situation. The Southerner is tremendously 
in earnest in his hatred of the North and its ideas, and 
in his belief that to proscribe the negro is to save South- 
ern society from the greatest peril that can befall it. 
Love of home, of children, of posterity«even, is one of 
the most powerful motives in the perpetration of wrongs 
upon the black race which fill the Northern mind with 
horror and indignation. 

We have a lesson at hand which may perhaps give 
our Northern people a charitable view of the Southern 
sentiment, and inspire them with hope of a great and 
radical change. We draw this from a work recently is- 
sued by the author, Miss Ellen D. Larned, which seems 
to be a careful, candid, and competent history of Wind- 
ham County, Connecticut. It appears that, in 1831, 
Miss Prudence Crandall, a spirited, well-known, and 
popular resident of the county, started a school for girls 
at Canterbury Green. The school was popular, and was 
attended not only by girls from trie best families in the 
immediate region, but by others from other counties and 
other States. Among these pupils she received a colored 
girl. She was at once told by the parents of the white 
children that the colored girl must be dismissed, or that 
their girls would be withdrawn from her establishment. 
Miss Crandall must have been a delightfully plucky 
woman, for she defied her patrons, sent all their chil- 
dren back to them, and advertised her school as a board- 
ing-school for " young ladies and little misses of color." 
Of course the people felt themselves to be insulted, and 
they organized resistance. They appointed a committee 
of gentlemen to hold an interview with Miss Crandall, 
and to remonstrate with her. But that sturdy person 
justified her course and stood by her scheme, as well she 
might. It was her business, and it was none of theirs. 
The excitement in the town was without bounds. A 



Social Facts, Forces and Reforms. 317 

town-meeting was hastily summoned " to devise and 
adopt such measures as would effectually avert the nui- 
sance, or speedily abate it, if it should be brought into 
the village." 

In 1833, Miss Crandall opened her school, against the 
protest of an indignant populace, who, after the usual 
habit of a Yankee town, called and held another town- 
meeting, at which it was resolved : 

" That the establishment or rendezvous, falsely denominated a 
school, was designed by its projectors as the theatre ... to 
promulgate their disgusting doctrines of amalgamation and their 
pernicious sentiments of subverting the Union. These pupils 
were to have been congregated here from all quarters, under th". 
false pretence of educating them, but really to scatter fire-brands, 
arrows, and death among brethren of our own blood." 

Let us remember that all this ridiculous disturbance 
was made about a dozen little darkey girls, incapable of 
any seditious design, and impotent to do any sort of 
mischief. Against one of these little girls the people 
levelled an old vagrant law, requiring her to return to 
her home in Providence, or give security for her main- 
tenance, on penalty of being " whipped on the naked 
body." At this time, as the author says : 

" Canterbury did its best to make scholars and teachers uncom- 
fortable. Non-intercourse and embargo acts were put in suc-s 
cessful operation. Dealers in all sorts of wares and produce 
agreed to sell nothing to Miss Crandall, the stage-driver declined 
to carry her pupils, and neighbors refused a pail of fresh water, 
even though they knew that their own sons had filled her well with 
stable refuse. Boys and rowdies were allowed unchecked — if not 
openly encouraged — to exercise their utmost ingenuity in mis- 
chievous annoyance, throwing real stones and rotten eggs at the 
windows, and following the school with hoots and horns if it ven- 
tured to appear in the street." 



318 Every-Day Topics. 

Miss Crandall' s Quaker father was threatened with 
mob violence, and was so terrified that he begged his 
daughter to yield to the demands of popular sentiment ; 
but she was braver than he, and stood by herself and 
her school. Then Canterbury appealed to the Legisla- 
ture, and did not appeal in vain. A statute, designed 
to meet the case, was enacted, which the inhabitants re- 
ceived with pealing bells and booming cannon, and 
" every demonstration of popular delight and triumph." 
This law was brought to bear upon Miss CrandaH's fa- 
ther and mother, in the following choice note from two 
of their fellow-citizens : 

" Mr. Crandall, if you go to your daughter's, you are to be 
fined $100 for the first offence, $200 for the second, and double it 
every time. Mrs. Crandall, if you go there, you will be fined, 
and your daughter Almira will be fined, and Mr. May and those 
gentlemen from Providence (Messrs. George and Henry Benson), 
if they come here, will be fined at the same rate. And your 
daughter, the one that has established the school for colored fe- 
males, will be taken up the same way as for stealing a horse; or 
for burglary. Her property will not be taken, but she will be put 
in jail, not having the liberty of the yard. There is no mercy to 
be shown about it." 

Soon afterward, Miss Crandall was arrested and taken 
to jail. Her trial resulted in her release, but her estab- 
lishment was persecuted by every ingenuity of cruel in- 
sult. She and her school were shut out from attendance 
at the Congregational church, and religious services held 
in her own house were interrupted by volleys of rotten 
eggs and other missiles. The house was then set on fire. 
The fire was extinguished, and in 1834, on the 9th of 
September, just as the family were going to bed, a body 
of men surrounded the house silently, and then, with 
iron bars, simultaneously beat in the windows. This, 
of course, was too much for the poor women and girls. 



Social Facts, Forces and Reforms. 319 

Miss Crandall herself quailed before this manifestation 
of ruffianly hatred, and the brave woman broke up her 
school and sent her pupils home. Then the people held 
another town-meeting, and passed resolutions justifying 
themselves and praising the Legislature for passing the 
law for which they had asked. 

All this abominable outrage was perpetrated in the 
sober State of Connecticut, within the easy memory of 
the writer of this article. It reads like a romance from 
the dark ages, yet these people of Canterbury were good 
people, who were so much in earnest in suppressing 
what they believed to be a great wrong, that they were 
willing to be cruel toward one of the best and bravest' 
women in their State, and to resort to mob violence, to 
rid themselves of an institution whose only office was to 
elevate the poor black children who had little chance of 
elevation elsewhere. Now this outrage seems just as im- 
possible to the people of Canterbury to-day as it does 
to us. The new generation has grown clean away from 
it, and grown away from it so far that a school of little 
colored girls would, we doubt not, be welcomed there 
now as a praiseworthy and very interesting institution. 
The Connecticut girls who go South to teach in colored 
schools should remember or recall the time when they 
would not have been tolerated in their work in their own 
State, and be patient with the social proscription that 
meets them to-day. The world moves ; the old genera- 
tion passes away ; the new generation strikes in ahead, 
and the time can hardly be far distant when the negro 
will find himself at home in the South. When the 
white man learns that a " solid South," made solid by 
shutting the negro from his vote, makes always a solid 
North, and that the solid North always means defeat, it 
will cease to be solid, and then the negro's vote will be 
wanted by two parties, and his wrong will be righted. 



320 Every- Day Topics. 

In view of the foregoing sketch of Northern history, we 
can at least be charitable toward the South, and abun- 
dantly hopeful concerning the future. 

The Shadow of the Negro. 

The history of negro slavery, extending from its begin- 
ning in Portugal over a period of four hundred years, 
and involving the exportation by violence from their 
African homes of forty millions of men, women and 
children, is one of exceeding and unimaginable bitter- 
ness. It is too late to criminate those who were respon- 
sible for beginning the slave trade, and for perpetuating 
the system of bondage that grew out of it. Many of 
them were conscientious, Christian men, who worked 
without a thought of the wrong they were doing. Some 
of them, as we know, really believed they were benefit- 
ing the negro, by bringing him out of a condition of bar- 
barism into the enlightening and purifying influences of 
Christianity. For many years negro slavery prevailed 
in this country, and greatly modified the institutions 
and the civilization of a large portion of it. It became, 
at last, the exciting cause of the greatest civil war known 
in the history of the world ; and when that war brought 
abolition, it gave to the black race in America not only 
freedom, but citizenship. The question as to what all 
these centuries of wrong and of servitude have done for 
the negro is not a difficult one to answer, but what they 
have done for the enslaving race is not so evident with- 
out an examination, The black man has been a menial 
so long that he has lost, in a great degree, his sense of 
manhood and his power to assert it. The negro carries 
within him the sense that his blood is tainted — that he is 
something less than a man, in consequence of the black- 
ness of his skin. He may be whitened out, so that only 



Social Facts, Forces and Reforms. 321 

the most practised eye can detect a trace of the African 
in him, but the consciousness of the possession of this 
trace haunts him like the memory of a crime, and to 
charge it upon him is to abase him and cover him with 
a burning shame. The readiness of the negro, in all the 
States, to be content with menial offices in the service 
of the white man, comes undoubtedly from the fact 
that such offices relieve him from all antagonism. They 
put him in a positiofi free from the pretension to 
equality, where he is at peace. We hear it said that 
the negro is a natural menial — a natural servant — but 
the truth is that, if the negro were only relieved from 
the burden of contempt in which his blood is held, his 
special adaptation to menial work would disappear at 
once. 

The harm that slavery did to the white man was one 
that touched him internally and externally, at most im- 
portant points. It vitiated his sense of right and wrong. 
Through its appeal to his interests, it made a system 
based in inhumanity and standing and working in direct 
contravention of the Golden Rule, seem to be a humane 
and Christian institution, to be maintained by argument, 
by appeal to the authority of the Bible, and by the sword. 
This, of course, was an immeasurable harm, from which 
only a slow recovery can be reached. Another evil re- 
sult of slavery to the white man was the disgrace that 
came to labor through its long years of association with 
servitude. No people can be prosperous who despise 
labor, and who look upon it as something that belongs 
only to a servile class. Any people that, for any cause, 
have lost the sense of the supreme respectability of labor 
— any people that, for any cause, have come to regard an 
unproductive idleness as desirable and respectable, have 
met with an immeasurable misfortune. The shadow of 
the negro not only rests upon the white man's sense of 
14* 



322 Every -Day Topics. 

right, not only on the white man's idea of labor, but 
upon his love of fair play. There is something most 
unmanly in the disposition to deny any man who has not 
harmed us a fair chance in the world. Are we, all over 
this nation, giving the negro a fair chance ? It was not 
his fault that he was born to slavery. It was not his act 
that released him from it. Notwithstanding all his years 
of servitude and wrong, he did not revolt when his op- 
portunity came, but bore his yoke with patience until it 
was lifted from his shoulders. He did not wrest from 
unwilling hands his boon of citizenship. Now, however, 
as we look into our hearts, we find that political rights 
were conferred upon him rather from an abstract sense 
of justice than for any love of the negro, or any equal 
place that we have made for him in our hearts and heads 
as he stands by our side. The North, to-day, is true to 
the negro rather in its convictions than in its sympathies. 
It never in its heart has admitted the negro to equality 
with the white man. It may consent to see the white 
man beaten by the negro in a walking-match at Gil- 
more's Garden, but at West Point the smallest measure 
of African blood places its possessor under the cruellest 
and most implacable social ban. So long as this fact 
exists — so long as the Northern white man utterly ex- 
cludes the negro from his social sympathies, and refuses 
to give him a fair chance in the world to secure respecta- 
bility and influence, it poorly becomes him to rail at his 
Southern brothers who do the same thing, and are only 
a little more logical and extreme in their expressions of 
contempt. The shadow of the negro lies upon the North 
as upon the South. It has obscured or blotted out our 
love of fair play. We do not give the negro a chance. 
It was recently stated in one of our metropolitan pulpits, 
by a minister of wide experience and observation, that 
he had never heard in any country better speeches made 



Social Facts, Forces and Reforms. 323 

than were recently made in this city by four colored 
men, who spoke on behalf of the freedmen. He gave 
them the highest place in all the powers and qualities 
that go into the making of eloquence. At Hampton, the 
negro is proving himself to be not only most susceptible 
to cultivation, but to be possessed of a high spirit of self- 
devotion. Under the charm of this most useful institu- 
tion the African ceases to be a a nigger," and achieves a 
self-respect and a sense of manhood that prepare him for 
the great missionary work of elevating his race. It can- 
not be disputed that the great obstacle that stands to- 
day in the way of the negro is the white man, North and 
South. The white man in this country is not yet ready to 
treat the negro as a man. The prejudice of race is still 
dominant in every part of the land. We are quite ready 
in New York City to invite Indians in paint and feathers 
into social circles, from which the negro is shut out by a 
social interdict as irreversible as the laws of the Medes 
and Persians. If the negro is a man, let us give him the 
chance of a man, the powers and privileges of a man. 
It is not necessary for us to give him our daughters in 
marriage, although he has given a good many of his 
daughters to us, as all mulattodom and quadroondom 
abundantly testify. It is not necessary for us to make 
an ostentatious show of our conversion to just and hu- 
mane ideas in regard to him. We should like to see the 
time when the preacher to whom we have alluded would 
feel at liberty to invite one of these orators whom he 
praised to occupy his pulpit, and when such an orator 
would feel at home there and seem at home there. 
When this time arrives, in the coming of the millen- 
nium, all other relations between the two races may be 
safely left to adjust themselves. 



324 Every -Day Topics. 



The Political Machine. 

It is readily observable that the protests against the 
political machine and the efforts on behalf of civil-ser- 
vice reform, as a practical outcome of that protest, orig- 
inate in the cities. People in the country follow their 
political leaders, without serious question, and do not 
come much into contact with the bad results which they 
do so much to secure. The one or two men in each town 
who are relied upon at head-quarters to do the party 
work, get office, it is true, but that seems to be because 
they are " fond of politics ; " and as the office has so 
long been the reward of party work, it is looked upon as 
quite the regular and legitimate thing. The city is al- 
most the only place where the authority of the political 
leader is questioned. He looks to the country towns for 
loyalty to his policy and decrees, and relies upon them 
to carry his ends in the State. The managing men of 
the small towns are always in confidential correspond- 
ence with head- quarters, and their work is done so 
quietly and cleverly that the country voter is never made 
to feel the yoke, or led to suspect that he is the tool of 
a corrupt cabal of office-holders and office-seekers. 

In the city, especially the great city, the machinery 
comes more to the surface. Here we find a class of 
professional politicians. Their business is politics. 
There may be some, above them, who are working for 
power, without any thought of office, but they know that 
every man under them is at work for what he can make 
out of the business. Some work with very small aspira- 
tions and expectations. There are wheels within wheels, 
and -there are those who work for so small a consideration 
as their drink. They furnish the machinery of all elec- 
tions. They attend and manage the primary elections 



Social Facts, Forces and Reforms. 325 

and caucuses. They do the party work, and will permit 
no one else to do it. Good men are often reproached 
with their neglect of political duty, especially as it re- 
lates to what are called " the primaries. " The reply to 
this reproach is that no good man can undertake to have 
anything to do with the primaries unless he belongs to 
" the machine," without the loss of self-respect. Indeed, 
all attempt to have anything to do with them, in the 
way of influencing their policy and results, is useless. 
If any clear-headed gentleman doubts this, let him try 
it. He only needs to do this once to be convinced. It 
has been tried many times, and always unsuccessfully. 
Even in our Staten Island' suburb, the machine has 
proved too strong for our excellent friend, Mr. George 
W. Curtis, and will have none of him. It has been tried 
here in the city. The moment a good man enters a 
meeting where a primary is held, the whole crowd know 
him. 

The latest instance reported to us was by the victim 
himself. He had been reproached for neglecting his 
duty, so he was moved to do it. He attended a primary, 
and found the leaders in consultation in a private room. 
His position was such that they could not deny him en- 
trance, and they immediately informed him that he must 
act as chairman. He protested that he wished to be at 
liberty to speak to such questions as might arise. The 
protest was hushed by the assurance that if he wished to 
speak he could call some one else to the chair. The 
meeting was called to order, and he was elected. Im- 
mediately a man jumped to his feet and moved the ap- 
pointment of a list of delegates to a certain convention, 
and the u question " was called from all parts of the house. 
Our virtuous chairman was caught in a trap, and had to 
put the question. As soon as it was decided, as it was 
nem. con. in favor of the nominations, another member 



326 Every-Day Topics. 

rose and moved that the meeting should immediately 
adjourn, as the weather was warm ! So our friend had 
his labor for his pains, and the men who had used him 
took great pleasure in showing how respectable their 
meeting was by publishing his name as its chairman, 
and thus doing what they could to make him seem to 
approve a list of political scalawags ! 

" But if all good men would unite, they could have 
their own way." That is a mistake. If all good men 
would unite, all bad men would do the same, and the 
bad men would draw for voters to help them through, 
from all parts of the city, as there would be nothing ille- 
gal in outsiders voting at a primary. It is their business 
to outvote the good men, and they do it every time, be- 
cause they have the whole machine of the city to do it 
with, and have no scruples to stand in their way, such as 
the good men have. Now do our country friends see the 
point at which we are aiming, when we advocate a re- 
form in the civil service ? Can they not see that just ao 
long as office is the reward of party work, just so long 
party work will and must be done by office-seekers, who 
work for their party from the basest motives ? Politics 
can never be purified in this country until there is a re- 
form in the civil service. Such purification is practically 
impossible, until office ceases to be the reward, practi- 
cally contracted for, of party service. 

Political Training. 

It is the general conviction that, sooner or later, we 
are to have a reform in our Civil Service. It is more 
than this. There is a general determination that there 
shall be such a reform. The fair and sensible men of 
all parties — all men who are not given over to partisan- 
ship—all men who have ceased to believe that politics is 



Social Facts , Forces and Reforms. 327 

a trade, to be pursued for personal gain, irrespective of 
the public good — believe in this reform, and look for- 
ward hopefully, and even impatiently, to the time of its 
accomplishment. But the question concerning men and 
materials for this- reform does not seem to have occurred 
to these people. The fact that there is no competent 
school for the preparation of men for public life, is one 
which does not seem to have presented itself to them. 

At present, men enter upon nearly every sphere of 
public life without the slightest special preparation for 
it. If a man can make a fair speech, if he is an adept 
at the pulling of wires, if by any tact in organization and 
in the working of party machinery in local elections he 
manages to win a degree of power and prominence, he 
becomes a candidate for office. He may know nothing 
whatever of the political history of his country, or of 
other countries. He may lack intelligence in all the 
great questions of political economy. He may even fail 
in a competent understanding of the issues involved in 
his own election. If he goes to Congress, he is simply 
placed at school, and is supported at the public charge. 
By the time he is well in his seat, and has become fitted 
for service, some other demagogue, as ignorant as he 
was at first, supersedes him, and he retires. He goes to 
Congress in the first place, not because he is fit for its 
duties, but because he wants the office, and manages to 
get it. He retires as soon as he has learned something, 
that another ignoramus, who has outmanaged him at 
home, may receive an education at the public expense. 

These statements are so well established in the politi- 
cal history of the country and the time, that they cannot 
be disputed. And here the question naturally arises 
concerning the preparation of the country for the reform 
which it would so gladly see effected. Where are we to 
find the men who have made politics, in all its scientific 



328 Every 'Day Topics. 

and practical departments, a long and careful study ? 
What shall the new requirements be ? and how shall we 
train men to meet them ? Have we already a body of 
men, sufficiently large and sufficiently conversant with 
scientific and practical politics, to meet the require- 
ments of a reform ? We fear that this last question 
must be answered in the negative, and must continue to 
be so answered until some means are established to train 
men for the public service. 

We have our military and naval schools for training 
men for the army and navy. After their graduation, 
they may go into civil life, but, in time of war, they are 
the first we call upon to organize and lead the forces of 
the country. They alone truly understand the business. 
They have been instructed in all the details of organiza- 
tion, subsistence, engineering, and active war. Now, we 
cannot understand why the men engaged in legislation 
and administration — in the civil service of the Govern- 
ment — do not need as careful a training as those who are 
called to its military and naval service. The knowledge 
demanded covers a wider field. The principles involved 
are a thousand times more complex. International law 
and polity, political economy, finance, the relations of 
the Federal Government to the States, the relations of the 
States to each other, constitutional history and constitu- 
tional law, diplomacy, and a vast aggregate of recorded 
usage and technical detail — all these need to be under- 
stood by the men in office. How are men to be grounded 
in the principles of government, and to acquire even 
the elements of this vast range of knowledge ? At pres- 
ent, the only education we give them is in active service. 
We are not only at the expense of their subsistence and 
tuition, but we are at the still greater expense of their 
blunders. 

Well, we do not propose another West Point, or an- 



Social Facts, Forces arid Reforms. 329 

other Annapolis. It would not be well, we presume, to 
establish a governmental school of politics. There are 
insuperable objections in the way. The partisans of free 
trade and protection, for instance, could never agree on 
the style of political economy to be taught. But there 
is no good reason why Yale and Harvard, or any other 
college, for that matter, should not have a department 
of politics, which should give a solid three years' course 
of study. There is no reason why a man should not go 
before a high examining board at Washington, from such 
a school as this, and win his certificate of fitness for pub- 
lic office. There are a thousand good reasons why such 
a man should receive the suffrages of the people for any 
office which they wish to fill. 

Aside from all direct influence upon governmental leg- 
islation and administration, the effect of the training 
which such a school would give would exercise a most 
beneficent influence upon the country. If the men who 
are trained there never enter office, they will add to the 
popular intelligence, and raise the public standard and 
the public tone. They will not only help to leaven the 
mass, but they will place the Government under intelli- 
gent criticism. Under their influence, the demagogue 
would be subjected to a fearful discount. Their pres- 
ence in public affairs and their distribution throughout 
the country would, of themselves, do much to reform a 
service that has sunk into deserved contempt. Ignorant 
men would be ashamed to show themselves in such a 
light. The simple establishment of such a school would 
call the attention of the public to the gross abuses from 
which they have suffered, and they would be glad to be 
represented by men who would not only serve the coun- 
try well, but would honor them. 

There is still another view to be taken of this matter. 
We can imagine no training to be more fruitful in its 



330 Every -Day Topics. 

solid culture to young men of means than this would be. 
Neither law nor medicine nor theology offers to the 
young man who does not wish to enter those professions, 
and who is not content with his accomplished academic 
course, so fine a field for useful culture as this school 
would afford, and we believe it would be thronged with 
students from the best classes of society. What better 
can be given to a young man than a thorough knowledge 
of statesmanship and citizenship ? It would be better 
than travel ; it would furnish a splendid basis for literary 
life and literary acquisition. It would fit and furnish 
him for society. 

So, whether we look at such a school, with its regu- 
larly established corps of professors and its great cur- 
riculum, as a training-school for politicians, statesmen 
and diplomatists, or as a means of popular instruction 
and elevation, or as a minister to individual culture, it 
is in every way desirable. What institution will be the 
first to inaugurate it ? What institution will first spring 
to satisfy the need of a great reform, and furnish the 
country with a means of culture so devoutly to be 
prayed for ? 

A Reform in the Civil Service. 

We have several times had occasion to speak of the 
small influence of the voting population of the country, 
in the shaping of political affairs. For half a century, 
two great political machines have managed the voters. 
Men have been nominated and elected to office, now in 
the interest of this machine, and then in the interest of 
that. Issues have been made up between the machines 
and fought out, but the decisions which the votes of the 
people have aided to make, whatever they may have 
meant to the people, have meant but one thing to the 



Social Facts , Forces and Reforms. 331 

men who have run the machine, viz., office and that 
which goes with office — power and patronage. For 
these last fifty years, the politics of the country have 
been run mainly in the interest and by the power of two 
great bands of office-holders and office-seekers. The 
motives of pay and plunder and power have been dom- 
inant. It has been perfectly well understood that office 
was the reward of party service. The small politician 
who has done the dirty work of the successful candidate 
for Congress, has been rewarded with a post-office, or a 
clerkship, or a place in the custom-house. The more 
ambitious have received consulships or foreign minis- 
tries. We have been disgraced at home and abroad by 
the appointment of men lacking every element of fitness 
for their positions. Politics has become a business — a 
trade. 

Now, these facts are so notorious and so shameful 
that no respectable man has had the " cheek" to deny 
them or to justify them. Both parties have pretended, 
in many ways and places, to favor a reform, but we have 
never had the slightest belief in their sincerity. We 
mean the machines when we speak of parties ; and we 
have doubted them simply because it is not in the na- 
ture of the machines to commit hari-kari. The old- 
fashioned politician is a machine-man, always, and he 
knows nothing of carrying on the business of a political 
campaign, except on the machine principle of " you 
tickle me ; I tickle you." So, when, in the planks of a 
platform established by a political convention of the old- 
fashioned machine-men, we discover one declaring for a 
reform in the civil service, we know that it means noth- 
ing. We know that the plank has been put into the 
platform to deceive the people with the special end in 
view of strengthening the machine. 

It so happens now that we have a President who be- 



, 33 2 Every -Day Topics. 

lieves in a reform in the civil service, and who took the 
platform on which he was elected to his high office at its 
word. He is engaged in carefully and conscientiously 
fulfilling his pledges. Now the sincerity of the machine- 
politicians of his own party may be gauged by the pro- 
ceedings of a recent political convention, which not only 
refused to endorse his action, but was at infinite pains to 
insult him in the person of the stanchest and most influ- 
ential friend of his policy. Mr. George William Curtis 
happens to think that there is something in American 
politics superior to the machine. He is not only not an 
office-seeker, but he is a man who is known to have de- 
clined high office in the hope of serving his country better 
on the platform and by the press. The history of that 
convention, in its slavish and brutal subserviency to the 
policy and will of a single machine-politician, is one of 
the most disgraceful in our annals ; but it betrays the 
real spirit of the machine, and ought to be very useful to 
the people of the country. The machine-man spits upon 
reform and reformer alike. All the machine-men hate 
reform, simply because reform is death to them. Mr. 
Conkling cannot possibly love Mr. Curtis, but Mr. Cur- 
tis will be sufficiently comforted by the respect and af- 
fection of all the good people of the country whose 
good opinion of the machine has died out. He may 
further be comforted in the fact that, whoever may 
own the present, the future is his ; for this is a question 
that can never be eliminated from the politics of the 
country, until it has achieved a sweeping and per- 
manent triumph. No man who believes in national 
progress can fail to believe in a reform in the civil 
service. 

How is this reform to be brought about ? Let us give 
up all thought that it will, or can, be accomplished by 
the political machine. The professional politician of 



Social Facts , Forces and Reforms. 333 

the old or the present school, the machine-man who be- 
lieves in him, the party press which supports him — 
these will do nothing. Worse than this : when brought 
face to face with the reform, and made to declare them- 
selves, they will give us another Rochester Convention — 
bitter, malignant, disgraceful. 

There is a large section of the American press which 
has no affiliation with the machine. Happily, this ques- 
tion of civil-service reform may be regarded as out- 
side of the pale of party politics. Both the political 
machines have undertaken to manage it, with the hope 
of ultimately killing it, and getting what they can out of 
it while it is dying. They are not in earnest in their 
support of it, and cannot be, in the nature of things. 
Happily, we say, the question is outside of party poli- 
tics. It is so by its nature, and so by the fact that both 
parties nominally adopt it and actually hate it. It is 
thus lifted out of the party fight, and becomes a question 
of public morals and of pure patriotism. As such, it 
can be treated by every independent political newspaper, 
by every literary magazine or journal, by every religious 
periodical of whatever sect, by the preacher in his pul- 
pit, the lecturer upon his platform, the author in his 
books. The editor and the " magazinist " have been 
publicly insulted. If they have any right to speak in 
this matter, it is time for them to assert it. 

The hope of the country is in the development of a 
sentiment among the voting population which will make 
it impossible for the machine to have its way. The 
country is not now so seriously divided, on any great 
issues, that it cannot afford to take hold of this reform, 
and achieve it by whatever legitimate machinery it may 
be able to place in service. The reform once achieved, 
the American people will be forever free from the basest 
influences that enter into our politics. What better 



334 Every -Day Topics. 

thing can this generation do than to leave the business 
of the country in the hands which are best fitted to carry 
it on, to put in foreign service men who will honor our 
country by their accomplishments and their high per- 
sonal character, and kill out the shameful traffic in pub- 
lic office ? 






MATTERS OF DOMESTIC CONCERN. 

Houses and Things. 

MR. CLARENCE COOK has lately said so much about 
houses, and the things that go to make them com- 
fortable and beautiful, that the rest of us have been glad 
to stand respectfully among the audience, and let him 
do all the talking. A man of positive ideas, and a 
graceful and forcible way of expressing them, is not so 
frequently met with that we can afford to miss even his 
smallest utterance. But Mr. Cook would have people 
think for themselves. One of his aims is to stimulate in- 
dependent thinking, and so to make every home, in its 
fulfilment of wants and its expression of tastes, a fresh 
and original growth. He would have us cut loose from 
the conventional, and look around for ourselves to find 
the natural and the picturesque. He would have us do 
away with shams and imitations, and have only that which 
is honest in structure and appearance. Specially would 
he teach us to do our own thinking. 

So we propose to think independently a little, espe- 
cially with relation to certain appointments of the house 
which, in these latter days, are suffering abuse, as it 
seems to us. The first thing to be spoken of is the car- 
pet. We like a handsome rug. We like an inlaid floor. 
A handsome rug upon an inlaid floor is a beautiful thing 
to look at. In a warm climate it is not only beautiful, 



336 Every -Day Topics. 

but fitting. A rug upon matting, during the cooler 
months, in tropical latitudes, is charming for many rea- 
sons ; but for our cold country we like a carpet — ingrain, 
Brussels, velvet — no matter what — something that covers 
the floor. A wooden floor needs a great deal of service 
to keep it in presentable condition, and should be pol- 
ished as often as one's boots, especially in latitudes where 
the boots have nails in them. Where the slipper is con- 
stantly worn, it is a very different thing. A hard pol- 
ished floor, or a wooden staircase, is not a pleasant 
thing to walk on. It is slippery and noisy, and a rug is 
always kicking up at the edges, especially where there 
are children. We like a well-carpeted house — the 
thicker the carpet the better — especially during the se- 
vere winter months. A great deal is said about carpets 
as dust-catchers and disease-absorbers, and all that ; 
but we very much doubt whether a well-swept and well- 
kept carpet is worse than a rug, in any particular. No 
one has at all demonstrated that it is worse, and in our 
climate it certainly is more comfortable than any other 
floor surface that is possible. 

Furnaces, too, are abused, and open fires are advo- 
cated. Now, we have had a good deal of experience, 
with furnaces not only, but with open fires. In the 
first place, open fires are incompetent to heat our houses. 
In the second place, they are exceedingly dusty ; and it 
somehow happens that the men who are very much afraid 
of the dust of the carpet set aside the dust argument 
when they talk about open fires. There is nothing that 
fills either carpets, or rugs, or atmosphere with dust so 
quickly as the open fire. The dust of a good furnace is 
the dust of the outside atmosphere — no more. An open 
fire is picturesque. It is cozy and home-like and orna- 
mental ; but when the outside temperature is at zero, 
mere picturesqueness will not answer. When a man is 



Matters of Domestic Concern. 337 

shivering, it will not comfort him to know that he is as 
picturesque as his fire, as he bends over it and pokes it. 
Furnaces are comfortable — there's no denying it. Car- 
pets are comfortable too, and carpets and furnaces are 
going to live. 

Even our plumbing is complained of, and men are 
taught to look back to a clumsy wash-stand and a big 
basin, and a heavy pitcher, as things that were pretty 
and sensible, and in every way more desirable than the 
modern hot and cold water that comes and goes with the 
turning of a cock or the lifting of a gate. Now it always 
seemed to us that a big water-pitcher was an awkward 
thing for a strong man to handle, to say nothing about a 
weak woman. Bathing the hands and face at an old- 
fashioned wash-stand — pouring water out of pitchers 
into basins, and out of basins into slop-jars — seems to us 
to be a very clumsy business, compared with that mode 
of introducing and dismissing water which has come in 
with " modern improvements." So we believe in plumb- 
ing, and not only don't believe it will ever be done away 
with, but are sure that it will go on unto perfection. 

The mistake of this era in the history of " household 
art and home decoration," lies, it seems to us, in the at- 
tempt to do too much with furniture. Ruskin, in one of 
his books, distinguishes between building and architect- 
ure. There are certain structures in which architecture 
should never be attempted. A grain-elevator, a store- 
house, a barn — these are buildings, and architecture is 
out of place in them. There is no more reason why they 
should be beautiful than there is why a meal-sack should 
be beautiful, or a wheelbarrow, or a coal-cart. So it seems 
to us that there may be, and that there are, certain items 
of furniture which we may legitimately excuse from the 
duty of picturesqueness. If our carpets are less beauti- 
ful than rugs upon bare floors, if furnaces are less inter- 
15 



338 Every -Day Topics. 

esting than open fires, if the old-fashioned wash-bowl 
and pitcher are more picturesque than the plumber's 
substitute, what of it ? In which direction shall we make 
our sacrifices ? Toward comfort and convenience, or 
toward the picturesqueness of ruder times and smaller 
means ? We advocate comfort and convenience, and 
leave others to do as they choose. The modern advo- 
cacy of beauty, in connection with all articles of furni- 
ture and household convenience, reminds one of the 
child who insists on making play of everything — who 
cannot take a mouthful of food, or do an act of ser- 
vice, without making it in some way a source of amuse- 
ment. 

To come to the practical point, a home may be inter- 
esting without being more than moderately beautiful, 
and may be more than moderately beautiful without 
being interesting at all. If we rely entirely upon furni- 
ture for the interest of a house — if we make furniture 
picturesque at the price of comfort and convenience, our 
homes may be made interesting in a moderate way, pro- 
vided we follow out our individual ideas, and do not fall 
back upon the conventionalisms of the manufacturers. 
But the most interesting things in a house should never 
be its furniture. Given convenient furniture, that shall 
be picturesque when convenient, the question whether a 
home shall be greatly interesting relates mainly to other 
things — to books, pictures, objects of art, bric-a-brac, 
and treasures of various sorts, in fact or in association. 
We can point to homes whose furniture attracts no at- 
tention whatever, but which are absorbingly interesting 
through the artistic products of its members. The more 
the culture and taste of cultured and tasteful people are 
expressed in their homes, through various modes and 
forms of art, the more interesting those homes will be ; 
and the more a guest is compelled to forget furniture, 



Matters of Domestic Concern. 339 

except as it answers to the higher harmonies of the 
house, the better. The best things of an interesting 
home are never bought of a furniture dealer, though the 
most beautiful may be. 

Good Talking. 

There is an impression among people who talk and 
write that the art of conversation has died, or is dying 
out; that there are not as many remarkable talkers in 
the world as there were, and that the present generation 
will leave no such records of brilliant conversation as 
some of its predecessors have done. We suspect that 
the impression is a sound one, and that for some reason, 
not apparent on the surface, less attention has been be- 
stowed upon the art of talking than formerly. It may be 
that the remarkable development of the press which has 
given opportunity for expression to everybody, with a great 
audience to tempt the writer, has drawn attention from 
an art demanding fine skill, with only the reward of an 
audience always limited in numbers, and an influence quite 
incommensurate with the amount of vitality expended. 

Still, there are doubtless many who would like to be 
good talkers. Social importance and consideration are 
perhaps more easily won by the power of good talking 
than by any other means, wealth and the ability to keep 
a hospitable house not excepted. A really good talker 
is always at a social premium, so that a knowledge of 
the requisites of good talking will be of interest to a 
great many bright people. For it must be confessed that 
men's ideas of the art are very crude and confused. 
When we talk of " the art of conversation," people really 
do not know what we mean. They do not know what 
the art is, or how it may be cultivated ; or, indeed, that 
it is anything more than a natural knack. 



340 Every-Day Topics. 

The first requisite of a good talker is genuine social 
sympathy. A man may not say, out of some selfish mo- 
tive, or some motive of personal policy, " Go to ! I will 
become a good talker.'' He must enjoy society, and 
have a genuine desire to serve and please. We have all 
seen the talker who talks for his own purposes, or talks 
to please himself. He is the well-known character—the 
talking bore. The talker who gets himself up for show, 
who plans his conversations for an evening, and crams 
for them, becomes intolerable. He lectures : he does 
not converse ; for there is no power of a talker so de- 
lightful as that of exciting others to talk, and listening 
to what his own inspiring and suggestive utterances have 
called forth. Genuine social sympathy and a hearty de- 
sire to please others are necessary to produce such a 
talker as this, and no other is tolerable. Social sympa- 
thy is a natural gift, and there is a combination of other 
gifts which constitute what may be called esprit, that 
are very essential to a good talker. This combination 
includes individuality, tact and wit — the talents, apti- 
tudes, and peculiar characteristic charm which enable a 
man to use the materials of conversation in an engaging 
way, entirely his own ; for every good talker has his 
own way of saying good things, as well as of managing 
conversation based on his esprit. 

Yet it is true that there are no good talkers who de- 
pend upon their natural gifts and such material as they 
get in the usual interchanges of society. For the mate- 
rials of conversation we must draw upon knowledge. No 
man can be a thoroughly good talker who does pot know 
a great deal. Social sympathy and u the gift of gab " 
go but a short way toward producing good conversation, 
though we hear a great deal of this kind of talk among 
the young. Sound and exact knowledge is the very basis 
of good conversation. To know a great many things 



Matters of Domestic Concern. 341 

well is to have in hand the best and most reliable mate- 
rials of good conversation. There is nothing like abun- 
dance and exactness of knowledge with which to furnish 
a talker. Next to this, perhaps, is familiarity with polite 
literature. The faculty of quoting from the best authors 
is a very desirable one. Facts are valuable, and thoughts 
perhaps are quite as valuable, especially as they are 
more stimulating to the conversation of a group. The 
talker who deals alone in facts is quite likely to have the 
talk all to himself, while the man who is familiar with 
thoughts and ideas, as he has found them embodied in 
literature, becomes a stimulator of thought and conver- 
sation in those around him. Familiarity with knowl- 
edge and with the products of literary art cannot be too 
much insisted on as the furniture of good conversation. 

Beyond this, the good talker must be familiar with the 
current thought and events of his time. There should 
be no movement in politics, religion and society that 
the good talker is not familiar with. Indeed, the man 
who undertakes to talk at all must know what is upper- 
most in men's minds, and be able to add to the general 
fund of thought and knowledge, and respond to the 
popular inquiry and the popular disposition for discus- 
sion. The man who undertakes to be a good talker 
should never be caught napping, concerning any current 
topic of immediate public interest. 

How to carry and convey superiority of knowledge and 
culture without appearing to be pedantic, how to talk 
out of abundant stores of information and familiarity 
with opinion without seeming to preach, as Coleridge 
was accused of doing, belongs, with the ability to talk 
well, to " the art of conversation. " It has seemed to us 
that if young people could only see how shallow and 
silly very much of their talk is, and must necessarily be, 
so long as they lack the materials of conversation, they 



342 Every -Day Topics. 

would take more pains with their study, would devote 
themselves more to the best books, and that, at least, 
they would acquire and maintain more familiarity with 
important current events. To know something is the 
best cure for neighborhood gossip, for talk about dress, 
and for ten thousand frivolities and sillinesses of society. 
Besides, a good talker needs an audience to understand 
and respond to him, and where is he to find one if there 
is not abundant culture around him ? 

The Amusements of the Rich. 

The average rich man and woman, in adult life, have, 
it must be confessed, rather a stupid time of it. If they 
do not have a country-house, to which they have bound 
themselves for the summer ; if, when they break up in 
the spring, they can wander where they please, they 
manage to get along pretty well. The man attends his 
club in winter ; the woman goes her society-round, and in 
the summer they are free. The theatre does not have 
many attractions for the old resident. His society means 
dinners, receptions, dress ; and it comes at last to be a 
bore, from which he retires in disgust to that which is 
still worse — himself. Here and there among them there 
is a hobby-rider, who manages to interest himself in some 
trifle, and so gets rid of his time. Often without culture, 
nearly always without a stimulus to industry, his lazy 
hours hang upon his hands, and he is glad of the change 
which summer brings him. We really do not see what 
can be done for him. He is usually too old to learn any- 
thing — especially that he must go out of himself into some 
sort of service to others, in order to sharpen his interest 
in life, and win the content that he lacks. 

The amusements of the adult rich can hardly be called 
amusements at all, for any pursuit that is entered upon 



Matters of Domestic Concern. 343 

for the simple purpose of killing time does not deserve 
that name. Amusement, or play, should be a sponta- 
neous, recreative exercise of the faculties and emotions, 
during the intervals of work. Amusement, in order to 
be genuine, must be entered upon with hearty zest ; and 
very few, except the young, and the adults who have 
some active and regular pursuit, are capable of this. A 
life of absolute leisure is, as a rule, a life without amuse- 
ment. The young engaged in study, and the maturer 
men and women who are in active life, are the only 
ones who enjoy the conditions of amusement. 

True amusement is of two kinds, viz. : active and pas- 
sive. The active and weary man and woman — those 
who exhaust every day their vital energies in work — take 
naturally to passive amusement. A lady of our acquaint- 
ance, engaged daily in severe intellectual tasks, says 
that nothing rests her like seeing other people work. 
For this she goes to the theatre, and the play upon her 
emotions there rests, and recreates her. Indeed, it is 
the emotional side of the nature, and not the active, 
which furnishes play to those who are weary with the use 
of their faculties. This fact covers the secret of the 
popular success of what is called emotional preaching. 
People who have been engaged all the week in exhaust- 
ing labor of any kind do not take kindly to a high intel- 
lectual feast on Sunday. They want to be moved and 
played upon. This rests and interests them, while the 
profound discussion of great problems in life and religion 
wearies and bores them. They are not up to it. They 
are weary and jaded in that part of their nature which 
such a discussion engages. The emotions which have 
been blunted and suppressed by their pursuits are hun- 
gry. So every form of amusement that truly meets 
their wants must be emotive, and must leave them free 
to rest in those faculties which are weary. 



344 Every-Day Topics. 

On the other hand, the young, who are brimming 
with animal life, and who fail to exhaust it in study, call 
for active amusements, and they must have them. And 
here the parent is in danger of making a great mistake. 
Unless a boy is a milk-sop, he must do something or 
die. If he cannot do something in his home, or in the 
homes of his companions, he will do something else- 
where. It is only within a few years that parents have 
begun to be sensible upon this matter. The billiard- 
table, which a few years ago was only associated with 
dissipation, now has an honored place and the largest 
room in every rich man's house. The card-table, that 
once was a synonym of wickedness, is a part of the rich 
man's furniture, which his children may use at will, in 
the pursuit of a harmless game. A good many manufac- 
tured sins have been dethroned from their fictitious life 
and eminence, and put to beneficent family service on 
behalf of the young. Athletic sports, such as skating, 
boating, shooting, ball-playing, running and leaping, 
have sprung into great prominence within the past few 
% years 4 — amusements of just the character for working off 
the excessive vitality of young men, and developing their 
physical power. This is all well — a reform in the right 
direction. Much of this is done before the public eye, 
and in the presence of young women, which helps to re- 
strain all tendencies to excesses and to dissipation. 

The activities of young women take another direction, 
and nothing seems to us more hopeful than the pursuits 
in which they engage. The rich young woman in these 
days, who does not marry, busies herself in tasteful and 
intellectual pursuits. The reading-club, the Shakspere- 
club, the drawing-class, and kindred associations, em- 
ploy her spare time ; and now there is hardly a more 
busy person living than the rich young woman who is 
through with her boarding-school. The poor, who sup- 



Matters of Domestic Concern. 345 

pose that the rich young woman leads an idle life, are 
very much mistaken. The habits of voluntary industry 
now adopted and practised by the young women of 
America, in good circumstances, are most gratefully sur- 
prising. One of them who is not so busy during the 
winter that she really needs a recuperating summer, is 
an exception. Our old ideas of the lazy, fashionable girl 
must be set aside. They are all at work at something. 
It may not bring them money, but it brings what is much 
better to them — the content that comes of an earnest 
and fruitful pursuit. It may take the form of amuse- 
ment, but it results in a training for self-helpfulness and 
industry. 

So, while not much can be done for the adult in this 
matter of amusement, much is done for the young, and 
much that will help to give us a generation of older men 
and women, who will not be content with the poor bus- 
iness of killing time. For it must be remembered that 
while the young women "assist" at the athletic games 
of the young men, the young men are indispensable to 
the intellectual associations of the young women. They 
meet together, and stimulate and help each other ; 
and it does not seem possible that either party should 
ever subside into those time-killers who haunt the clubs 
established for men, or those jaded women who drag 
themselves around to dinners and lunches and thronged 
assemblies. 

is* 



MISCELLANEOUS. 

Scientific Foolishness. 

1I7E have been exceedingly amused by an article 
* * from the pen of Professor Grant Allen, published 
in a recent number of the Fortnightly Review, and en- 
titled " A Problem in Human Evolution.' 7 In conse- 
quence of the opposition which Mr. Darwin's theory has 
met with, concerning the causes which, in the course of 
the development of man from his hirsute anthropoid an- 
cestors, have despoiled him of his hairy covering, Pro- 
fessor Allen says : " It seems highly desirable, therefore* 
to prop up Mr. Darwin's theory by any external supports 
which observation or analogy may suggest, and, if possi- 
ble, to show some original groundwork in the shape of 
a natural tendency to hairlessness, upon which sexual 
selection might afterward exert itself, so as to increase 
and accelerate the depilatory process when once set up." 
So the writer goes to work in the highly "desirable" 
enterprise of propping up Mr. Darwin's theory that men 
were not made, but were developed from a lower form 
of life, as it was embodied in a hairy animal. The prob- 
lem to be solved is : " How did men get rid of their 
hair ? " Well, how do you suppose it was done ? It was 
done mainly by lying down on it. The most hairless 
portion of the body is the back, and the professor thinks 
that, as man assumed the erect position in walking, he 
became an animal lying less and less on its belly, and 



Miscellaneous. 347 

more and more upon its back, so that the growth of the 
hair was checked, or the hair itself was worn away. The 
manner of wrapping and protecting the human infant is 
also supposed to have had something to do with the ef- 
fect. After a few had got rid of their hair, hairlessness be- 
came popular, and what artificial denudation had begun, 
sexual selection completed. Bare skins were too strong 
for bear-skins, and the hair-wearers were left out in the 
cold. Now, we submit that there never was a specula- 
tion more irredeemably nonsensical than this. And it is 
gravely put forth in a journal of the best class as worthy 
of respectful reading and consideration ! Those who be- 
lieve that man was created by an all-wise power who gave 
to the skin the beauty and delicacy which distinguish it 
from the hairy integuments of the brute creation, are 
accused very freely by the scientific world of credulity, 
but there are very few among them who are sufficiently 
addled to accept Professor Allen's speculations upon 
this topic as worth the paper they were written on. A 
child on reading them would naturally ask why, if lying 
upon the back should produce the results attributed to 
it, would not lying on the back of the head affect the 
covering of that portion of the human structure in the 
same way. Now, it so happens that where the weight 
of the head rests the most heavily, the hair sticks the 
tightest. When a man grows bald, he grows bald on the 
top of his head, where he gets no pressure whatever. 
Now, not one of our hairy ancestors ever lay down on 
his back without his head, and the head with all its 
weight, was pressed upon the hair. Does it not occur 
to Professor Allen as strange that pressure, as a depila- 
tory, should be so partial in its operation ? Nay, does 
it not seem strange to him that the same agent which 
denudes the body of its hair acts as a genuine tightener 
of that covering upon the head ? 



348 Every-Day Topics. 

Speculation is cheap, so let us indulge in a little. As- 
suming as sound the theory that we are descended from 
a hairy anthropoid ape, we must admit that we started 
from rather a savage condition. Why is it not possible 
that the hair was pulled out in fighting ? What with 
active hair-pulling, and the cicatrices of wounds received 
in combat, it is not difficult to conceive of a hairy man 
or woman pretty well cleaned off. So, as a hairless 
skin began to be appreciated as a badge of bravery, it 
furnished "a ground-work upon which sexual selection 
might afterward exert itself." Is there anything unrea- 
sonable in this ? Isn't it about as scientific as Professor 
Allen's hypothesis ? We take out no patent on it, and 
The Fortnightly is welcome to it. 

But we have a better speculation than that one, which 
Professor Allen went all around without seeing, and the 
only rational one in the case. If we were writing for the 
object which inspires Professor Allen's efforts, viz., that 
of " propping up " Mr. Darwin's theory, we should speak 
of the probable and entirely natural effect of clothing 
upon the human frame. Hairy brutes suffer with cold as 
men do who have no hair. When man began to be man, 
with the hair on, he began to be bright enough to kill 
animals and take their skins off. Then he became bright 
enough to supplement his own hair with the hair he had 
captured. At last he began to wear clothes as a regu- 
lar habit. As soon as he did this he rendered the hair 
upon his own person unnecessary, and nature ceased to 
produce it, as nature ceased to furnish eyes to the fishes 
that take up their homes in the Mammoth Cave. Na- 
ture is full of analogies which teach us that when a 
function is superseded it ceases. Now, how is that for 
a theory? Is it not a good deal more rational than 
Professor Allen's ? We state it to show how easy it is to 
build a theory which shall, in all respects, be as rational 



Miscellaneous. 349 

as those gravely put forth by men who clain to be scien- 
tific. And we do claim that this theory is a better one 
than Professor Allen's, in all respects, for his own pur- 
poses. 

Still, we do not believe in it. We have never yet seen 
anything that looks like proof that we were not created 
by a direct act of the Almighty. We believe that man 
was made originally with a hairless skin for beauty's 
sake, and because he was endowed with the ability to 
manufacture his own clothing, and with the power to 
tint and fashion it in correspondence with his ideas of 
fitness and attractiveness. There is no more reason for 
doubting that man began to exist by a direct act of 
creation, endowed with all his present characteristics of 
form and natural covering, than that life began to exist on 
the earth in any form. Somewhere, behind all the links 
of causation, exists the causeless cause, incomprehensi- 
ble to us, but possessing intelligence and consciousness 
out of which our own consciousness and intelligence are 
born, and without which they never could have existed. 

The Tax for Barbarism. 

The world groans with poverty. Wherever, in the 
cities of the Old World or the New, a well-dressed, 
comfortable man moves through a street, the hand that 
asks for alms is extended to him. He can hardly walk a 
block without being painfully reminded that there is a 
great world around him that lives in mean conditions, 
from hand to mouth. The tax upon a benevolent man's 
sensibilities is constant and most depressing. The con- 
sciousness that, while he is enjoying the reward of hon- 
est labor, there are millions whose minds are charged 
with anxiety concerning the barest necessaries of life, is 
full of bitterness. It matters not that the most of this 



350 Every -Day Topics. 

poverty is the result of vice and improvidence, for that 
only makes the matter more hopeless. The immediate 
causes of this poverty are apparent enough, and great 
efforts are made in various directions for destroying 
them ; but the reformers work against what seem to be 
almost hopeless disadvantages. 

There is one cause of the world's poverty, however, 
which the ordinary mind very rarely considers. We rec- 
ognize the personal vices of men, but we pay little re- 
gard-to the vices of governments. To-day the world is 
spending on war — on national contests for power, and on 
the preparations for possible contests in the future — 
enough to feed the poor of the world. England, France, 
Germany, Italy, Spain, are full of soldiers. Russia and 
Turkey and the minor powers immediately interested 
are, at the present writing, absorbed in a great and aw- 
ful war. The thoughts, policies, energies, resources of 
all Europe seem to be absorbed in this barbarous busi- 
ness. England is jealous of Russian progress in the 
East. France is smarting under the sting of lost pres- 
tige, and watching her opportunity for revenge. Ger- 
many, conscious that her old enemy is not yet humbled, 
holds her army organized, and ready for another trial. 
Italy is drawing the life-blood of her people to sustain a 
standing force that shall make her power respected by 
the subtle agencies which are contriving its destruction. 
Spain, herself the field for easy revolution, is pouring 
out her treasure and her blood in trying to preserve her 
precious island of Cuba. The American people are still 
staggering under the terrible burdens which their recent 
civil war laid upon their shoulders. The waste of life, 
the waste of labor, the waste of the materials of life, the 
waste of the hoarded results of labor, produced by these 
gigantic quarrels and these stupendous preparations for 
quarrels, cannot be calculated. 



Miscellaneous. 3 5 1 

It is easy to say this and see this ; yet, right here in 
America, there are many men who look upon a European 
war as a godsend to our industry and our commerce ! 
It is a grave mistake. The world is now so closely 
woven together in commercial interest and sympathy, 
that no war can occur without carrying its depressing in- 
fluence to every nation, state, county, town, and fire- 
side on the civilized globe. The country that, in the 
necessity of Avar, buys our goods to-day, will to-morrow, 
in consequence of its war, be either weakened or bank- 
rupt, and bur customer will be gone. The time of de- 
pression and adversity through which this nation has 
been passing for the past five years, and from which it 
has recently emerged, has produced its result in Europe. 
Every country with which we trade has severely felt our 
reverses, and the hard times we have talked of here have 
been the common topic in London, Liverpool, Man- 
chester, Paris, Lyons, and the other commercial and 
manufacturing centres. Those producing and trading 
peoples of Europe thought they made something out of 
our war, but what they made is gone. If we make any- 
thing out of a European war, we shall lose it all in five 
years. Any war that cripples them will cripple us. In 
short, war is never profitable to anybody. It is not a 
legitimate business. It is a barbarous business. It is a 
constant drag upon the prosperity, not only of the na- 
tions immediately involved in it, but of the world ; and 
the whole world has a vital interest in bringing it to an 
end. There is not a poor man in America who will not 
be made poorer by a European war. Its suspension of 
productive industry, its destruction of vital resources, 
its waste of valuable material, are all losses from the 
world's wealth, and all the world will feel them. War, 
too, is a natural breeder of vice. What a legacy of vice, 
of idleness, of immorality, has war left to us ! Where 



3 S 2 Every -Day Topics. 

did all our wretched army of tramps come from ? 
Whence has come all this overwhelming accession to the 
ranks of pauperism ? These frequent murders and sui- 
cides and robberies, in what did they directly or indi- 
rectly originate ? These are all the natural children of 
war. We cannot outlive them in a generation. We 
never can outlive them, entirely. Why, if we could do 
away with all war, and with all standing armies for half 
a century, the world would become so comfortable and 
respectable that it would not know itself. 

Well, war, let it be remembered, is not the outgrowth 
of Christianity. It is its constant disgrace. It is a relic 
of that barbarism from which, in our vanity and self- 
complacency, we fancy that we have retired. It is the 
attempt to settle political and even religious questions 
by might. It rises in no essential dignity above the 
struggle which two dogs indulge in for a bone. It is the 
way in which savage tribes settle a dispute. It is the 
duel, now pretty universally under condemnation, un- 
dertaken by states. It is brutal, not human. It is the 
work of barbarous men or savage animals, and not of 
Christian peoples. 

It has been the habit of the world to laugh at peace 
men and peace congresses, but they, after all, are right. 
It is, of course, the duty of a nation to defend itself; 
this we suppose all men will admit. The law* of self- 
preservation is a law universally recognized ; but in these 
days the cases are very few in which arbitration, honestly 
entered upon with a desire for the preservation of peace, 
cannot settle any question that may arise between dif- 
ferent nations. Even if Christian considerations do not 
avail for the purpose, the absolute bankruptcy and ruin 
of the great governments of the world, through the taxes 
of barbaric war, must ultimately drive them to the set- 
tlement of international questions by international ar- 



Miscellaneous. 353 

bitration. The nations of the world are now too near 
together, and too strongly and immediately sympathetic, 
to permit the warlike and semi-barbaric among them to 
indulge in the arbitrament of war. We cannot afford 
war in this country, and we cannot afford to permit 
others to indulge in it. It is out of place in our civiliza- 
tion. 

The Drama. 

In an article published some years ago, we recognized 
the drama as an institution that had come to stay as an 
important factor in the social and intellectual life of the 
people — as a source of much pleasure, and a possible 
source of much culture. Since that day, the drama has 
had its place in this magazine. We have criticised it 
freely, we have commended heartily what has seemed to 
be praiseworthy, and our notices of famous actors and 
actresses have presented the public with much interest- 
ing, instructive, and stimulating personal history. It 
seems to us that theatres are improving, and that there 
is much less that is objectionable in their conduct and 
influence than formerly. We have been witnesses to the 
fact, right here in New York, that the cleanest and best 
plays have been the most successful. Plays without any 
equivocal situations in them — plays that leave no stain, 
and excite no unwholesome imaginations — have run for 
months, and made their managers rich. 

Now, these facts are weighty in the work of reforma- 
tion. Whenever the time comes in the history of the 
stage that dirt does not pay, it will cease to be presented. 
There are, undoubtedly, theatres in New York which 
cater to the lower tastes of the crowd, but there are cer- 
tainly theatres here that studiously avoid offending the 
ears of polite and Christian people with double ente7ite, 



354 Every-Day Topics. 

and profanity, and irreverence. There is undoubtedly 
an increasing attendance upon the theatre among refined 
and religious people, and we rejoice in the fact, for it is 
full of promise for the theatre itself, and for the bodily 
and mental health of those who are attracted to it. The 
undiscriminating abuse of theatres — the attempt to drive 
good people away from them— is a damage to the cause 
of morality in any community. The undiscriminating 
condemnation of actors is a gross and inexcusable injus- 
tice, and when this condemnation comes from a minis- 
ter of the gospel of charity, what can it do but drive the 
whole fraternity away from all religious influence and all 
sense of religious obligations ? Yet there are Christian 
ministers who do this over the brims of their wine-cups, 
foolishly fancying that the cherished habit of their lives 
is absolutely righteous, when it is more baleful to the 
world in the influences and results of a single day, than 
all the theatres and actors of the world are in a decade. 
It is not in this way that the world is to be bettered. 
If the drama is among us, and is come to stay — and 
none will dispute this — then it is our business to make 
the best of it, and to do all in our power to make it pure. 
We are always, in our patronage of it, to offer a pre- 
mium for literary and personal purity. A play that is 
bad should always be severely let alone. An actor or 
an actress whose character is notoriously bad should be 
shunned. We would no sooner sit before the foot-lights, 
giving countenance and support to a courtesan, than we 
would consent to meet her in society. She is a dishonor 
to her craft, and a disgrace to the stage. Her presence 
is pollution. To pet and patronize such a creature as 
this is to disgrace ourselves, no matter how great her 
genius may be. It is by discriminating between virtu- 
ous and vicious plays, and virtuous and vicious players, 
that the stage is to be kept pure and ennobling in its in- 






Miscellaneous. 355 

fluence, and not by condemning everything and every- 
body connected with it. 

The old and familiar claim that the theatre is " a 
school of morals," so far as it was intended to declare it 
to be an educational institution, with morality for its ob- 
ject, was without any foundation whatever. The thea- 
tre is never ahead of the people who patronize it. If it 
has any definite aim, it is to please — to reflect the tastes, 
the moralities, the opinions, and the enthusiasms of those 
who attend it. No theatre can be run unless it pays, 
and, as money must be the first object, such plays must 
be presented as attract the crowd. Plays that are offen- 
sive repel the crowd, so that the constant study of man- 
agers is to ascertain the tastes and wishes of the people. 
The tastes of those who attend the Madison Square 
Theatre are very different, doubtless, from those of the 
people who used to throng the old Bowery, but it is a 
fact worth noting that those who attend the worst thea- 
tres are treated, most commonly, to plays which appeal 
to the best sentiments and moods of their audiences. 
Poetic justice is insisted upon in the denouement of all 
plots, before audiences of the lower class. It is only 
thoughtful people who will tolerate plays that do not 
" come out right." 

Public opinion and public taste are the master and 
mistress of the stage. It is but a short time since it was 
proposed to produce a Passion Play in New York. Now, 
a play representing on the boards of a theatre the Pas- 
sion of our Lord could have no apology or justification 
save in the ignorant devotion of those producing it. No 
such apology or justification exists in New York, and 
public opinion rose against the project and vehemently 
protested. The manager who had it in hand bowed re- 
spectfully to the public voice and withdrew it. The 
incident is a good illustration of the power of public 



356 Every -Day Topics. 

opinion over the theatre. The truth is that the life of 
the theatre depends on its power to please the public, 
and it is bound by every consideration of interest to re- 
flect the moral sense and moral culture of those upon 
whom it depends for support. It is for this reason that 
we have no fears of a bad moral result of the theatre 
upon the public. If an immoral actress wins a great 
success in New York, it is not because she has debauched 
New York, but because New York is tolerant of immo- 
rality. If a bad play succeeds in a New York theatre, it 
is because there is not moral sense enough in those who 
witness it and in the public press to rebuke it and drive 
it from the boards. The better and purer the patronage 
of any theatre may be, the better will that theatre be- 
come, in every variety of influence which a theatre can 
exert ; and it is delightful to believe that the dramatic 
instinct, which is the source of so much pleasure to so 
many good people, can be gratified without danger of 
pollution. 

The Nihilists. 

To the average American, the name of "nihilist" is 
a name of horror. It is identified with all that is repul- 
sive in infidelity, and all that is damnable in crime. To 
the ordinary mind, a nihilist is a bad man, or a bad wo- 
man, who does not at all understand or weigh political 
questions, and who is insane enough to suppose that good 
can come of desperate measures, however poorly adapted 
they may be to secure the end sought. The nihilist 
commits a murder apparently in a wanton mood, and 
apparently for the sake of murder only ; we do not un- 
derstand the motive, or the bearing of the deed, and we 
can only regard it with horror and execration. By 
one thing, however, we have all been surprised in this 
connection, viz., the bravery and the loyalty to their 



Miscellaneous. 357 

confederates with which the nihilists have met the 
consequences of their crimes. Nothing approaches this 
courage and constancy but Christian martyrdom. There 
is another thing that has surprised us, viz., the fact that 
nihilists are found in the highest families, and not in- 
frequently among the best women of Russia. With these 
latter facts in mind, it is quite time for us to suspect that 
the nihilist is not quite the bad person we have supposed 
him to be, and to inquire into his character, his policy, 
and his motives. 

We have been much interested and instructed by Mr. 
Axel Gustafson's article on this topic in the National 
Quarterly Review for July, and it seems to us that the 
American people, no less than the cause of truth and hu- 
manity, are under great obligations to him for his masterly 
setting forth of the facts concerning this terrible political 
sect. We cannot undertake in this article to present 
more than the conclusions at which the reader arrives in 
its perusal. We may say at the beginning that Mr. Gus- 
tafson does not argue the case for the nihilists, but pre- 
sents his facts and his documentary evidence in such a 
way that no candid man can conclude the reading of his 
paper without feeling that the best and noblest men of 
Russia are in the ranks of the nihilists. The men who 
love liberty in Russia, the men who would like to see 
their nation enfranchised from the yoke of irresponsible 
personal government, the men who wish to see Russia 
progressing in the path of freedom from political and 
ecclesiastical tyranny, the men of noble aspirations for 
themselves and their country, the men of ideas and of 
courage and self-sacrifice, are nihilists. It is true that 
most of these look upon Christianity, as it is presented 
to them in the doctrines and forms of the Russian 
Church, as a worse than useless system of religion, but 
who is to blame for that ? It is true, also, that the ni- 



358 Every-Day Topics. 

hilist regards murder as a duty for which he is willing 
to sacrifice his own life, but who is to blame for that ? 
It must be remembered that there is no lesson of des- 
perate violence, and even of indiscriminate wrong, that 
he has not learned of his own government. He has been 
used all his life to seeing men banished, or murdered by 
his government, on suspicion of opposition to Czarism. 
He knows that no opinion or word of his, favoring the 
freedom of the people, or the subordination of the gov- 
ernment to the good of the people, will receive a mo- 
ment's toleration. He has but to speak a word for him- 
self or his nation, and the hounds of the government are 
set at once upon his track, and then he goes to prison, 
or to Siberia, or to the gallows. There can be no 
question, we suppose, that the sweetest blood of Russia 
is freezing in Siberia, and that, however mistaken the 
nihilists may be in their methods, they hold among 
their members the noblest souls of Russia. They have 
adopted the method of terrorism as absolutely the only 
one at their command. Free discussion has no home in 
Russia. A slip of the tongue, even, is rewarded with 
imprisonment or something worse, so that these men and 
women, with a courage and a self-sacrifice that find few 
examples in modern history, devote themselves to the 
dangerous task of liberating their country from its double 
form of slavery. 

We cannot do better here than to quote some of the 
authoritative declarations of the nihilist organs. They 
are taken from different documents, and explain them- 
selves. 

11 Surely the liberty we crave and strive toward is not exorbi- 
tant ; we only desire the right to free expression of our thoughts, 
the right to act independently and in accordance with, our convic- 
tions ; to have a voice in the State's affairs, and to know that our 
persons are protected against official whims. These, surely, are 



Miscellaneous. 359 

elementary rights of mankind, rights to which we are entitled be- 
cause of our being human, and for whose vindication we call our 
brothers' aid." 

" What would we do with a constitution under present circum- 
stances ? So long as the country is denied all justice, a constitu- 
tion would be of no use to it. Let us be given justice without 
distinction of persons, and we shall be satisfied. But if the State 
chariot goes on as before, an old programme must be maintained; 
it is — Death to the court camarilla and to all criminal officials." 

" We execrate personal government especially, because it has 
outraged by all its acts every feeling of justice and honor ; be- 
cause it systematically opposes freedom of thought, speech and 
education ; because it supports for egotistical reasons social cor- 
ruption and political immorality, since it finds in these both sup- 
port and accomplices ; because it makes law and justice the instru- 
ments of its personal interests ; because it exhausts the material 
forces of the land, and lives at the expense of the welfare of com- 
ing generations ; because by its home and foreign policy it has 
brought about a breach between our land and the rest of Europe ; 
and because, after being weakened and martyred, we are ex- 
posed to the derision and contempt of our enemies. " 

" The problem of the socialistic revolutionary party is the sub- 
version of the present form of government, and the subjection of 

the authority of the State to the people The transfer 

of the State power to the hands of the people would give our his- 
tory quite another direction. A representative assembly would 
create a complete change in all our economic and State relations. 
Once let the Government be deposed, and the nation would ar- 
range itself far better, may be, than we could hope." 

These declarations do not read like the words of blood- 
thirsty, and unreasoning, and unreasonable fanatics. 
They are the words of men who " mean business," it is 
true, but of men who simply want what the American in- 
herits as his birthright. The American, in judging these 
brave men and women, should remember that the prev- 
alent idea in Russia is that the people were made for the 
Government, and not the Government for the people. 
These nihilists differ with the prevalent idea, and so are 
in disgrace, and not only in disgrace, but in constant dan- 



360 Every-Day Topics. 

ger of imprisonment, banishment, or death. They have 
been driven in their desperation to adopt the govern- 
mental policy of terrorism and cruelty. They meet 
threat with threat, terror with terror, death with death, 
because the Government, with the total suppression of 
free discussion, leaves them no other weapons to fight 
with. We wish there were a better course for these 
noble souls to pursue, but we judge them not. Their 
methods seem harsh — sometimes almost fiendish — but 
they know what they are after, and they appreciate the 
awful risks they run. They have undertaken to redeem 
their country from misrule — a great task — in which we 
wish them entire success. We profoundly regret that 
they feel compelled to use the same machinery of ter- 
rorism and murder with which their government seeks 
for their overthrow, but we cannot do less than sympa- 
thize in their great object, and admire their courage and 
self-devotion. 

Cheap Opinions. 

There is probably nothing that so obstinately stands 
in the way of all sorts of progress as pride of opinion, 
while there is nothing so foolish and so baseless as that 
same pride. If men will look up the history of their 
opinions, learn where they came from, why they were 
adopted, and why they are maintained and defended, 
they will find, nine times in ten, that their opinions are 
not theirs at all — that they have no property in them, 
save as gifts of parents, education, and circumstances. 
In short, they will learn that they did not form their own 
opinions — that they were formed for them, and in them, 
by a series of influences, unmodified by their own reason 
and knowledge. A young man grows up to adult age in 
a Republican or Democratic family, and he becomes 
Republican or Democrat in accordance with the ruling 






Miscellaneous. 361 

influences of the household. Ninety-nine times in a 
hundred the rule holds good. Like father, like son. 
Children are reared in the Catholic Church, in the 
Episcopal, Unitarian, Presbyterian, Baptist, Methodist 
Church, and they stand by the Church in whose faith 
and forms they were bred. They become partisans, 
wranglers, defenders on behalf of opinions, every one 
of which they adopted without reason or choice. Touch 
them at any point, and they bristle with resistance, often 
with offence ; yet they borrowed every opinion they 
hold! If they had all been changed about in their 
cradles, we should have the same number of partisans, 
only our present Republican would be a Democrat, our 
Roman Catholic would be our Methodist, and so on 
through ail the possibilities of transformation. 

Opinions acquired in the usual way are nothing but 
intellectual clothes left over by expiring families. Some 
of them are very old-fashioned and look queerly to the 
modern tailor ; but they have the recommendation of 
being only clothes. They do not touch the springs of 
life, like food or cordial. Certainly they are nothing to 
be proud of, and they are not often anything to be 
ashamed of. Multitudes would not be presentable with- 
out them, as they have no faculty for making clothes 
for themselves. The point we make is, that opinions 
acquired in this way have very little to do with charac- 
ter. The simple fact that we find God-fearing, God-lov- 
ing, good, charitable, conscientious, Christian men and 
women living under all forms of Christian opinion and 
church organization, shows how little opinion has to do 
with the heart, the affections and the life. Yet all our 
strifes and all our partisanships relate to opinions which 
we never made, which we have uniformly borrowed, and 
which all Christian history has demonstrated to be of 
entirely subordinate import—opinions often which those 
16 



362 Every-Day Topics, 

who originally framed them had no reason to be proud 
of, because they had no vital significance. 

When we find, coming squarely down upon the facts, 
what cheap stuff both our orthodoxy and our heterodoxy 
are made of; when we see how little they are the 
proper objects of personal and sectarian pride ; when 
we apprehend how little they 'have to do with character, 
and how much they have to do with dissension and all 
'uncharitableness ; how childish they make us, how sen- 
sitive to fault-finding and criticism ; how they narrow 
and dwarf us, how they pervert us from the grander and 
more vital issues, we may well be ashamed of ourselves, 
and trample our pride of opinion in the dust. We shall 
find, too, in this abandonment of our pride, a basis of 
universal charity — cheap, and not the best, but broad 
enough for pinched feet and thin bodies to stand upon. 
If we inherit our opinions from parents and guardians 
and circumstances, and recognize the fact that the great 
world around us get their opinions in the same way, we 
shall naturally be more able to see the life that underlies 
opinion everywhere, and to find ourselves in sympathy 
with it. We heard from the pulpit recently the state- 
ment that when the various branches of the Christian 
Church shall become more careful to note the points of 
sympathy between each other than the points of differ- 
ence, the cause of Christian unity will be incalculably 
advanced ; and that statement was the inspiring word of 
which the present article was born. 

We can never become careless, or comparatively 
careless, of our points of difference, until we learn what 
wretched stuff they are made of; that these points of 
i difference reside in opinions acquired at no cost at all, 
and that they often rise no higher in the scale of value 
than borrowed prejudices. So long as "orthodoxy" of 
opinion is more elaborately insisted on in the pulpit than 



Miscellaneous. 363 

love and purity ; so long as dogmatic theology has the 
lead of life ; so long as Christianity is made so much a 
thing of the intellect and so subordinately a thing of the 
affections, the points of difference between the churches 
will be made of more importance than the points of 
sympathy. Pride of opinion must go out before sympa- 
thy and charity can come in. So long as brains occupy 
the field, the heart cannot find standing room. When 
our creeds get to be longer than the moral law ; when 
Christian men and women are taken into, or shut out of, 
churches on account of their opinions upon dogmas that 
do not touch the vitalities of Christian life and character ; 
when men of brains are driven out of churches or shut 
away from them, because they cannot have liberty of 
opinion, and will not take a batch of opinions at second- 
hand, our pride of opinion becomes not only ridiculous, 
but criminal, and the consummation of Christian unity 
is put far off into the better future. 

With the dropping of our pride of opinion — which 
never had a respectable basis to stand upon — our re- 
spect for those who are honestly trying to form an opin- 
ion for themselves should be greatly increased. There 
are men who are honestly trying to form an opinion of 
their own. They are engaged in a grand work. There 
are but few of us who are able to cut loose from our be- 
longings. Alas ! there are but few of us who are large 
enough to apprehend the fact that the opinions of these 
men are only worthy of respect as opinions. We can 
look back and respect the opinions of our fathers and 
grandfathers, formed under the light and among the cir- 
cumstances of their time, but the authors of the coming 
opinions we regard with distrust and a degree of un- 
charitableness most heartily to be deplored. We are 
pretty small men and women, anyway. 



364 Every- Day Topics. 



Too Much of It. 

As the world grows older, and the materials of knowl- 
edge are multiplied, and the employments of life are 
subjected to the widest and intensest competitions, the 
ordinary individual seems to be quite overmatched by 
his circumstances. The average man is not " sufficient 
for these things," and the intellectual aliment that is 
provided for him is altogether in excess of his demands 
— altogether ahead of the possibilities of his consump- 
tion. We go on producing profusely in all departments, 
mostly of non-essential material, and the process of 
gathering is a process of selection. 

Let us take, for instance, our morning newspaper. 
No man can read one of our great New York dailies 
through, and digest its contents, and have time or 
strength left for other duties. He can only pass his eyes 
over, and very indistinctly gather and remember the 
leading matters of news. It is a huge jumble, in the 
main, of unimportant facts — facts that have no relation 
to his life. Now, any newspaper man knows that the es- 
sential matters in his columns can be crowded into one- 
tenth of the space that they occupy, and that he fills his 
columns with material that it is a waste of any man's 
time to read. He must compete with his neighbor, there- 
fore he must give acres of space to trash. Few can read 
it, and nobody would miss it, or be the poorer or worse 
for losing it. 

Who will give us the newspaper that will print only 
that which is worth reading — only that which people will 
remember — reducing it all to its compactest form ? The 
late Samuel Bowles, of Springfield, probably came near- 
est to doing exactly this thing of all who have under- 
taken it. This, at least, was what he definitely tried to 



Miscellaneous. 365 

do — to "boil down" everything. He was often known 
to apologize for a long article on the ground that he had 
no time to write a short one. The thing he accomplished 
was so unexampled that his paper was regarded as a 
model ; and it achieved a national reputation, though 
published in a little city of only thirty thousand people. 
If his successors stand by this idea, they will make their 
newspaper as much a success as he did. One page of a 
small paper is enough to furnish a record of any day's news 
— of everything that it is desirable to see or remember. ' 

There was a time when a minister was obliged to fur- 
nish pretty much all the intellectual pabulum of his par- 
ish. His people had little to read, and they read little. 
He was the only scholar, and he preached long sermons, 
and they either liked them or could stand them. Now 
a long sermon is, in ninety-nine cases in a hundred, a 
mistake. It is not desired on the part of the people, and 
it is in no way needed by the people. They are glad 
when it is finished, and know that for all practical pur- 
poses it had been better finished from fifteen to thirty 
minutes earlier. When they have received the idea of a 
sermon, they can dispense with the exposition of its va- 
rious phases and the dilutions and illustrations that go 
with it. In short, the people nowadays have a great 
abundance of intellectual stimulus outside of the pulpit, 
and they want their sermons boiled down, as much as 
they do' their newspapers. It is not that they want less 
in them— they want all they can get, and all that the 
best man has it in him to give ; but they want it in 
smaller space. The pulpit sin of talking too much is 
pretty universal. We do not know of a minister in the 
whole round of a pretty wide acquaintance who is ac- 
cused of talking too little. 

The theatres are even more open to criticism on these 
matters than the newspaper and the pulpit. How many 



366 Every- Day Topics. 

persons does any one suppose there are in any theatre in 
New York, on any night, who are not glad when the 
play of the place and the evening is over ? One of the 
great drawbacks on theatre-going and concert-going and 
opera-going is that they last so long that they bore a 
man. When that which was intended to be an enter- 
tainment and an amusement becomes tedious and tire- 
some, it ceases, of course, to answer its intention. We 
believe we express the universal feeling when we say 
that our public amusements are wearisome except to the 
fresh few who have no need of them. Three hours in a 
hot and crowded hall, at the end of a day of labor, are 
too many, and we have no doubt that many more would 
attend amusements if it were not that the last half of 
their continuance becomes simply a period of weary and 
impatient endurance. The way in which a tired audi- 
ence jumps from a preacher's " Amen" for the door, is 
only equalled by the rush which begins before the fall of 
the curtain of the theatrical or operatic stage. 

Look, for another instance, at the amount of stuff that 
enters into what we are pleased to call our social life. 
The hen that, undertook to "spread herself " over a 
bushel of eggs was a fair type of the modern woman who 
undertakes to keep up her social relations with a great 
city-full of women. What is called the "social tax" 
upon women is something enormous. There ai;e hun- 
dreds of thousands of women who are weary all the time 
with the work of keeping up relations with each other, 
that are never flavored with the element of friendship. 
No good comes of it that we know of, or ever heard of. 
It consists entirely of calling, and is never so pleasant 
in its experiences as when the caller fails to find the 
lady called on at home. If a lady can succeed in making 
twenty calls in an afternoon, in consequence of finding 
only ten ladies at home, she accounts it a most success- 



Miscellaneous. 367 

ful performance of her social duties, and boasts of it as 
a good thing well got along with. We know of nothing 
that wants boiling down any more than our social life. 
It needs this concentrating process to make it significant 
not only, but to make it endurable. It is good for nothing 
as it is, and it is a weariness to flesh and spirit alike. 

We are glad to see that so many great and able men 
have gone to making primers, so that the essential 
knowledge embraced in the treatises of philosophers and 
the records of scientific investigators may be brought in 
simple and easily available forms within the reach of all. 
We must all go to primer-making, for there is not enough 
of any man or of any life-time to be spread over such 
spaces, and diluted with such inanities and non-essen- 
tials as seem to prevail in every department of human 
interest. The days grow no longer as the world grows 
older, but the interests, the employments, the amuse- 
ments of the world are increased ten-fold, so that they 
must be concentrated and reduced in order that they 
may preserve their proper relations to each other, and 
to the capacities of life and time. 



V 



European Travel. 



The number of Americans travelling in Europe during 
the last year has been very large. This continued inter- 
est in Europe, which seems really more fresh and strong 
with every passing year, is a good sign, and can only re- 
sult in good to our country. Our sea-side hotels are the 
only sufferers from this annual flight, but they manage to 
prosper in spite of it, so that we cannot spend much sym- 
pathy upon them. America has now become such a nation 
of travellers that Europe has arranged itself in many 
regions for her special accommodation. Beds are made, 
tables are set, waiters are trained, with special reference 



368 Every-Day Topics. 

to American wants and tastes, and no American can ar- 
rive anywhere without understanding that he is welcome, 
and has been looked for and carefully provided for. 

Americans have been much accused, both at home and 
abroad, of pride and vainglory in their country. It is 
true that the average American grows up with the idea 
that his country is, in all respects, the most remarkable 
and desirable country that the sun shines on — that it has 
the longest rivers, the highest mountains, the broadest 
prairies, the most notable resources in mines and soils, 
the best institutions, and the brightest, the best-educated, 
the happiest, and the most prosperous people on the 
face of the globe. We suppose this unreasoning pride 
of country is not peculiar to Americans. The average 
Englishman is about as bigoted in his national pride as 
he can be, and so is the average Frenchman, while the 
German regards them both with a measure of contempt, 
as he indulges in his habitual glorification of "Vater- 
land" There is no cure for this overweening national 
vanity but travel. Shut a nation off by itself, as the v 
Chinese have been separated from the world in the years 
gone by, and it naturally becomes to itself " The Cen- 
tral Flowery Kingdom," and all other nations are " out- 
side barbarians." Self-idolatry is the besetting sin of all 
peoples shut up to themselves, and nothing has done so 
much to modify the American national vanity as the 
travel of the last few years. 

However grand in its natural features America may 
be, and however vast in its material resources, these pe- 
culiarities are hardly legitimate subjects of pride, and 
in the presence of what man has done in Europe, the 
American grows ashamed of his vanity of what God has 
done for him, and acquires a more modest estimate of 
himself and of his grade and style of civilization. The 
great cathedrals, the wonderful cities, the collections of 



Miscellaneous. 369 

art, the great highways, even the ruins of the ancient 
buildings, minister to his humiliation by showing him 
how far other nations, new and old, surpass his possi- 
bilities of achievement. When a man is thoroughly hum- 
ble in the presence of his superiors, or in the presence 
of work that overmatches his power and skill, he nat- 1 
urally becomes not only teachable, but an active and 
interested learner. Europe to-day is a great inspirer to 
America and a great teacher. It is true that she gets 
but little of her political inspiration from Europe, but 
her instruction and inspiration in art are almost entirely 
European. In architecture, painting, sculpture, and even 
in literature, European ideas are dominant. 

So this great tide of life that goes out from us every 
year does not return without that which abundantly re- 
pays all its expenditure of time and money. For in all 
this impression of European superiority in many things, 
there is very rarely anything that tends to wean the 
American from his home. The conventionalities of old 
society, and habits and customs that had their birth in 
circumstances and conditions having no relations to his 
life, do not tend to attract the American from his home 
love and loyalty. He usually comes back a better Amer- 
ican than he goes away, with the disposition only to avail 
himself of what he has learned to improve himself, his 
home and his country. The American, bred to great 
social and political freedom, cannot relinquish it, and 
can never feel entirely at home where he does not enjoy 
it. He perfectly understands how a European can come 
to America and be content with it as a home, because he 
can shape his life according to his choice, but he cannot 
understand how an American can emigrate to Europe 
and make a satisfactory home there, because the social 
and political institutions would be felt as a yoke to him, 
and a burden. 

16* 



37° Every -Day Topics. 

To leave out of all consideration the matter of utility, 
we know of nothing in the whole round of recreative 
experiences so pleasure-giving as European travel. A 
man of culture, visiting for the first time the old homes 
of art and story, experiences about as much of pleasure 
as this world has to give. To see new peoples and strange 
scenery is a great delight ; and to do this, having nothing 
else to do — far removed from business cares, and even the 
possibility of other employment — is to see them under the 
most enjoyable conditions. Indeed, we know of no better 
reward for the labor of many years than the ability it 
should secure to visit Europe as a sight-seer. It is often 
thrown as a reproach at the American that he goes abroad 
quite ignorant of what is worth seeing in his own coun- 
try, but this is unjust. In the first place, many of the 
things quite worth seeing in America are very difficult to 
reach. To all the scenes of Europe, the way is paved 
with conveniences, and often strewn with luxuries. The 
great mountains and canons and geysers of the far West 
are difficult to reach. A man almost literally takes his 
life in his hand when he visits them, and his experiences 
are full of hardship. In Switzerland, there is a better 
road over the highest mountain-pass than America can 
show in her parks, and the treasures of art which Europe 
has to show are of a kind which an American cannot find 
at home. From the time an American starts from home, 
including his passage of the Atlantic, until he returns and 
once more greets his native land, he experiences around 
of pleasures procurable in no other way. He comes back 
full of new ideas, he is rested, he is refreshed and every 
way improved ; and he is ready, as we are, to give the great 
army of his countrymen who yearly follow in his track- 
to repeat his experiences — a hearty "God speed ! " 



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